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| December 5, 2012 
 Obama 
Administration cooperates with the OIC’s assault on free speech!
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 |  
 Sec. of State 
Hillary Clinton delivers remarks at the December, 2011 meeting of the Istanbul 
Process
 |  Dear Nelson,
 
 If you 
cherish our First Amendment right of free speech, we urge you, as strongly as we 
can, to read the article below by Nina Shea about the Istanbul Process 
(highlights added), which was recently posted on National Review 
Online.
 
 
 
| For over 18 months now, the 
Obama administration has been working with the Organization of Islamic 
Cooperation (OIC) on what is known as the Istanbul Process. 
 The Istanbul 
Process has evolved into an assault on our free speech so serious that next year 
ACT! for America will launch a national campaign to expose what is happening and 
fight back against it.
 
 It’s simply not possible to overstate how serious 
a threat this is to our First 
Amendment.
 |  You can help us prepare now for 
next year’s national campaign, by making a year-end contribution to ACT! for 
America’s 5th anniversary appeal, which we 
announced in September.
 
 
 
| 
 | Simply 
go online here, make a $5 or more monthly commitment to ACT! for America’s 
Patriot Partner program, or a $30 or more single gift. When you do, you’ll be 
entered in a drawing to win one of two chances to have Brigitte Gabriel visit 
your community and meet with you and up to 25 of your friends. 
 You can 
also make a single gift by printing 
out a reply form here and mailing your 
contribution.
 |  We urge you, please, read the 
article below and help us prepare for next year’s campaign to protect free 
speech with your most generous 
contribution.
 
 Because even if America succeeds in preventing every 
future terrorist attack, if we lose our freedom to speak out against radical 
Islam, a central tenet of sharia law will prevail in America and put a dagger in 
the heart of the First Amendment.
 
 Here’s just one quote from the column 
below:
 
 
 
| 
 | Judging from the 2011 session I was partially able to 
observe as a commissioner on the official U.S. Commission on International 
Religious Freedom, the point of the Istanbul 
Process is for the governments of the developed West [to] give an accounting to 
the governments of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, Qatar, and other key Muslim 
states on measures taken to stop American and other Western citizens from 
disparaging Islam. |  
 
 
 
 America 
Again Submits to the Istanbul Process
 
 By Nina Shea.
 
 http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/334647/america-again-submits-istanbul-process-nina-shea
 
 
 Round three of the “Istanbul Process” 
opens today, December 3, and runs through Wednesday, at Canada House, in London, 
hosted by the U.K. and Canada. The Istanbul 
Process is Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s major transnational law 
initiative, undertaken in partnership with the Organization of Islamic 
Cooperation (OIC). It was established last year to “implement” measures against 
speech and expression that negatively “stereotype[s]” Islam and Muslims, with a 
particular emphasis on enacting them in the West.
 
 This initiative 
was started as an inexplicable, gratuitous gift to the Muslim world following 
the March 2011 adoption of a non-binding U.N. Human Rights Council 
resolution (16/18) on the same theme. While the 
Obama administration claims that it doesn’t intend for the process to adopt 
regulations beyond the American free-speech standard, our partner, the OIC, is 
only too eager to do just that.
 
 For over a decade within the 
U.N., the OIC has relentlessly pushed for a universal law to punish blasphemy, 
or “defamation,” of Islam. This 56-member-state organization, an essentially 
religious body, is in fact chartered to “combat defamation of Islam.” It issues 
fatwas and other directives to punish public expression of apostasy from Islam. 
Its current action plan calls for “deterrent 
punishments” in all states for “Islamophobia,” a term that encompasses a broad 
range of constitutionally protected speech, judging from the 
OIC website’s black list of Americans and other perpetrators of 
“Islamophobia.” The OIC’s stated understanding of the Istanbul Process is that 
it will “help in enacting domestic laws for the countries involved in the issue, 
as well as formulating international laws preventing inciting hatred resulting 
from the continued defamation of religions.”
 
 Corner readers will 
remember that the Istanbul Process’s first conference was 
co-chaired by Clinton and the OIC secretary general in July 2011, in 
Istanbul, with the foreign ministers of the Muslim countries in attendance. The 
second was held 
over three days of closed-door meetings last December, at the offices of the 
U.S. Department of State in Washington. That meeting drew enough controversy 
within free-speech circles to raise questions about whether the process would 
continue. But thanks to a leak last week by 
OIC head Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, we now know the event will go ahead, even if its 
agenda is still being treated like it’s “classified.”
 
 Judging from the 2011 session I was partially able to 
observe as a commissioner on the official U.S. Commission on International 
Religious Freedom, the point of the Istanbul Process is for the governments of 
the developed West give an accounting to the governments of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, 
Pakistan, Qatar, and other key Muslim states on measures taken to stop American 
and other Western citizens from disparaging Islam. This puts our 
diplomats in a tight spot: Unlike virtually every other country represented in 
the conference hall, America does not protect any religion or any other body of 
ideas from criticism and ridicule. However, when we’re in the dock this time 
around, the U.S., represented by Dr. 
Suzan Johnson Cook, the administration’s severely marginalized 
ambassador-at-large for religious freedom, will have some measure of “progress” 
to report.
 
 For example, the U.S.’s top intelligence official and its top 
commander in Afghanistan were again deployed to suppress blasphemy against Islam 
in Florida and, this time around, they succeeded. Last year, the efforts of our 
top authorities to stop Florida micro-church pastor Terry Jones from desecrating 
a Koran ended in failure. But this year, their resort to the “good offices” of 
Tampa socialite Jill Kelley proved an effective strategy. Her persuasive emails 
resulted in Florida talk-show host Bubba the Love Sponge’s standing down from 
deep frying a Koran, something he had threatened to do on-air. The OIC’s 
Ihsanoglu would likely rule Bubba was about to “abuse” freedom of expression by 
not being able (incontrovertibly, I should note) to pass a “responsible use” 
test.
 
 That leads to our next plea: The 
administration has also adopted the OIC’s own standard of condemning the “abuse 
of free expression.” Or at least that is what it appeared to do on the website of the 
pivotal U.S. embassy to Egypt on September 11 this year. Our embassy declared on 
its homepage: “We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal 
right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others.”
 
 But perhaps, the best evidence of America’s “implementation” in response 
to the Istanbul Process is the Justice Department’s dispatching the FBI a couple 
months ago to investigate Mark Basseley Youssef (a.k.a. Nakoula Basseley 
Nakoula, or Sam Bacile), the California Coptic filmmaker of “Innocence of 
Muslims,” the YouTube trailer that blasphemed the Muslim prophet. As Ambassador 
Cook can point out, this investigation has resulted in a creative criminal 
conviction of Youssef, and his being sentenced by a federal court to a year in 
prison. All the better for the U.S.’s reputation as implementers is that it will 
be lost on the conferees that Youssef has been imprisoned on a probation 
offense, à la Al Capone — though, unlike Capone, his underlying offense, without 
which he would not have been investigated, was making a crude, insulting video, 
which is hardly equivalent in American law to gangland massacres or 
racketeering. It, in fact, is not a crime at all. Thus, most important, the 
OIC’s take-away will be that in defense of Islam the U.S. government can and 
will regulate speech.
 
 Nevertheless, none of this is likely to impress 
the Istanbul Process gathering. On its opening day last December, Saudi Arabia — 
headquarters to and godfather of the OIC — beheaded a Sudanese woman for 
“sorcery.” Last week, Egypt sentenced to death Youssef, Terry Jones, and six 
other Americans implicated in the blasphemous YouTube trailer. For the Istanbul 
Process that’s “best practices” for “implementation.” Thus, again, America will 
be judged to have fallen short, indignation will rise, and the Istanbul Process 
will need to ramp up its pressure.
 
 — Nina Shea is director of 
the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom and co-author with Paul 
Marshall of Silenced: 
How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes Are Choking Freedom Worldwide.
 
 
 
 
| 
 
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