At the U.N., a Dangerous Leap of Faith

President Bush traveled to the United Nations Wednesday to join Gordon Brown of the U.K. and Shimon Peres of Israel at a two-day conference presided over by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. The conference is a continuation of last July's summit of world religions held in Spain and also organized by King Abdullah and the Muslim World League. Later today, the U.N. is expected to endorse a statement issued at the conclusion of the Spain conference on the importance of religion and humanity's common values. Among them is "respect for religions, their places of worship, and their symbols ... therefore preventing the derision of what people consider sacred." All religions deserve respect, but the devil is in the details. As Leonard Leo and Donald Argue, members of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, point out, this language is "a cleverly coded way of granting religious leaders the right to criminalize speech and activities that they deem to insult religion." In other words, this may be giving U.N. approval to Islamic "blasphemy laws," which are used to stifle dissent. If King Abdullah and other supporters of the Madrid statement truly care about the value of religion, they must allow people to freely practice the faith of their choosing, as prescribed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, rather than give cover to blasphemy laws.