Events Detail

The Center for Religious Freedom recently held a conference titled:

The U.N.'s Racism Conference, "Islamophobia," & the Campaign to Crush Debate and Dissent within Islam

To view video of the event click here.

Preparations are underway for the 2009 U.N. World Conference on Racism and, as a result of intense lobbying by the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), the issue of "Islamophobia" will be a prominent focus. The World Conference could ensure that a prohibition against "Islamophobia" will be endorsed by the world community as the newest international human right. 

       Shea, Marshall, Bayefsky, Nazer, Mansour

Hudson's conference explained the  proposed bans against "Islamophobia," comparing them to blasphemy strictures that have been used to curtail freedoms of expression, press, and religion by some of the OIC's most repressive member states.

This dangerous trend toward prohibitions of "Islamophobia" and the campaign against free speech within Islam was discussed by panelists Anne Bayefsky, Paul Marshall, Sheikh Ahmed Subhy Mansour, and Fahad Nazer.

Tuesday, October 30th 12:00 - 2:00 P.M.

Anne Bayefsky is a Senior Fellow at Hudson Institute and formerly taught law at Columbia University Law School. Since 1984, she has participated in U.N. human rights conferences on both official and non-governmental delegations, and conducted a major review of U.N. human rights legal documents in collaboration with the U.N. High Commission on Human Rights. She has authored a book on the United Nations, published numerous articles, and is the recipient of Canada's highest annual human rights research award.  

Paul Marshall is a Senior Fellow at Hudson Institute and the author and editor of over twenty books on religion and politics, especially religious freedom. He has just completed a world survey on religious freedom, to be published this December, and is heading a research project on blasphemy and political repression.  

Sheikh Ahmed Subhy Mansour is an Egyptian national with more than thirty years of scholarship on Islam, a former assistant professor at Al Azhar University, a former visiting visiting fellow at National Endowment for Democracy and a fellow at the Human Rights Program, HarvardLawSchool. He is the founder of the Quranic movement, a reform effort against fanaticism and bigotry in the Muslim world. In 2002, he was granted political asylum in the United States because of persecution in Egypt.

Fahad Nazer is a resident fellow at the Washington-based Institute for Gulf Affairs  Through his work and his writing, including most recently a briefing series on Yale Global Online, he has helped bring attention to the obstacles facing political reformers in Saudi Arabia and the country's policy of violating the religious freedom of non-Muslims, as well as Muslims who do not follow the state supported Wahhabi doctrines. Previously, he served as a political analyst in the Political Affairs Department of the Embassy of Saudi Arabia in Washington, DC. He is currently coauthoring a monograph on Saudi Arabia, entitled "Inside the Kingdom: Saudi Arabia's People, Its Politics and Its Future," to be publ