There are many international conferences scheduled for 2009. Some, like the Climate Change conference in Copenhagen, are crucial. Others, like NATO’s 60th anniversary summit, important. Then there are some plain dull ones. I’m thinking of the International Congress on Medical Librarianship. But none of the international meetings scheduled for 2009 is as invidious as the so-called Durban II conference.
Modelled on the 2001 Durban “anti-racism” conference, which famously turned into an anti-Israeli, anti-American spectacle, Durban II promises to continue where the last event left off. The overriding theme of the Durban II draft communiqué is “that the United States, western Europe, Israel and the other liberal democracies – their principles, institutions, policies, respective histories and national identities – are singularly racist and discriminatory against Islam”, argues UN Watch, an NGO.
In reaction to the Danish cartoons of Muhammad, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) has asked that Durban II sanction “defamation” of religions, and particularly the Islamic faith, under the term “Islamophobia.”
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