UN to Hear About Discrimination Against Atheists While Muslims Whine

As the persecution of Christians is on the increase around the globe, with churches being torched and bombed, clergy imprisoned and murdered and believers being killed, jailed or displaced, the worlds attention is turned to the bruised feelings of Christianities two biggest persecutors.

GENEVA (Reuters) - Atheists, humanists and freethinkers face widespread discrimination around the world with expression of their views criminalized and subject in some countries to capital punishment, the United Nations was told on Monday.

In a document for consideration by the world body's Human Rights Council, a global organization linking people who reject religion said atheism was banned by law in a number of states where people were forced to officially adopt a faith.

"Extensive discrimination by governments against atheists, humanists and the non-religious occurs worldwide," declared the grouping, the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) which has some 120 member bodies in 45 countries.

In Afghanistan, Iran, Maldives, Mauritania, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Sudan "atheists can face the death penalty on the grounds of their belief" although this was in violation of U.N. human rights accords, the IHEU said.

Further, in several others legal measures "effectively criminalize atheism (and) the expression and manifestation of atheist beliefs" or lead to systematic discrimination against freethinkers, the document declared.

It was submitted to the rights council as it opened its annual Spring session against a background of new efforts in the U.N. by Muslim countries to obtain a world ban on denigration of religion, especially what they call "Islamophobia".

Three of the states with legislation providing for death for blasphemy against Islam, a charge which can be applied to atheists who publicly reveal their ideas, are on the council - Pakistan, Mauritania and Maldives.

Turkey's Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told the council on Monday there was a "rising trend" of Islamophobia, adding: "We condemn all sorts of incitement to hatred and religious discriminationagainst Muslims and people of other faiths."

OIC WANTS ACTION

And earlier this month a top official of the 57-nation Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) said the body would be focusing on getting agreement on criminalizing denigration of religion in coming talks with Western countries.

In November last year, the head of the 21-country Arab League told the U.N. Security Council in New York his organisation wanted a binding international framework to ensure "that religious faith and its symbols are respected".

The IHEU, and other non-governmental rights groupings, argue that many Muslim governments use this terminology and the concept of "religious blasphemy" within their own countries to cow both atheists and followers of other religions.

A number of these governments "prosecute people who express their religious doubt or dissent, regardless of whether those dissenters identify as atheist", the IHEU document submitted to the rights council said.

Islamic countries - including Bangladesh, Bahrain, Egypt, Indonesia, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Turkey - had also stepped up prosecution of "blasphemous" expression of criticism of religion in social media like Facebook and Twitter.

OIC countries have 15 seats on the council, all from Asia, Africa and the Middle East, and make up just less than one third of the rights body. 

 

Thanksgiving and Abraham Lincoln

A Proclamation.

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consiousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the Unites States the Eighty-eighth.

By the President: Abraham Lincoln

William H. Seward,
Secretary of State

This is a transcript of the proclamation that brought us the first official Thanksgiving holiday, from one of our greatest presidents, a man that historical revisionists are trying to cast in a new light.

What is of this trend to recast the greatest figures in history, those persons that have built our civilization, and to mold them to conform to and/or justify a fringe agenda?

My former fellow travelers (athiest/agnostics) have tried to hijack Lincoln as one of their own. Though never a member of any one denomination, Lincoln is far from being the atheist icon that historical revisionists are trying make him. Lincoln read and quoted from the bible extensively, he invoked Providence and called upon the Almighty for our salvation and he attended a Presbyterian Church on a regular basis.

In his younger days, Lincoln was witness to the partisanship of various denominations and seemed to have been put off by this. Lincoln may have been a Free Christian, believing in the common tenants in Christian faith, while avoiding the particularities of any single denomination or he may have been an unorthodox Christian that maintained his own view of Christianity.

The revisionists are using quotes, generally taken out-of-context, to brace their conclusion that he was an atheist or agnostic, without taking into consideration the volumes of his writings and speeches that showed his belief in God and an in-depth understanding of Judeo-Christian tradition and beliefs.

No person will ever know exactly what Lincoln believed, but to shove him into the atheist camp, when the preponderance of evidence leads to the opposite conclusion is intellectually dishonest.

Thanksgiving(s) have been, traditionally religious holidays to English speaking peoples, but as with all of our holidays it is being usurped by the new faiths of secularism and consumerism, by robbing thanksgiving of it's religious identity and casting it's founder in an non-religious light, we further undermine our history, tradition and values.


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Thanksgiving and Abraham Lincoln

A Proclamation.

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consiousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the Unites States the Eighty-eighth.

By the President: Abraham Lincoln

William H. Seward,
Secretary of State

This is a transcript of the proclamation that brought us the first official Thanksgiving holiday, from one of our greatest presidents, a man that historical revisionists are trying to cast in a new light.

What is of this trend to recast the greatest figures in history, those persons that have built our civilization, and to mold them to conform to and/or justify a fringe agenda?

My former fellow travelers have tried to hijack Lincoln as one of their own. Though never a member of any one denomination, Lincoln is far from being the atheist icon that historical revisionists are trying make him. Lincoln read and quoted from the bible extensively, he invoked Providence and called upon the Almighty for our salvation and he attended a Presbyterian Church on a regular basis.

In his younger days, Lincoln was witness to the partisanship of various denominations and seemed to have been put off by this. Lincoln may have been a Free Christian, believing in the common tenants in Christian faith, while avoiding the particularities of any single denomination or he may have been an unorthodox Christian that maintained his own view of Christianity.

The revisionists are using quotes, generally taken out-of-context, to brace their conclusion that he was an atheist or agnostic, without taking into consideration the volumes of his writings and speeches that showed his belief in God and an in-depth understanding of Judeo-Christian tradition and beliefs.

No person will ever know exactly what Lincoln believed, but to shove him into the atheist camp, when the preponderance of evidence leads to the opposite conclusion is intellectually dishonest.

Thanksgiving(s) have been, traditionally religious holidays to English speaking peoples, but as with all of our holidays it is being usurped by the new faiths of secularism and consumerism, by robbing thanksgiving of it's religious identity and casting it's founder in an non-religious light, we further undermine our history, tradition and values.