UNESCO Moves On Preventing Future Insults To Religions

On April 3, the Executive Board of UNESCO adopted an Agenda Item proposing that UNESCO’s Director General take steps to adopt "a binding international legal instrument to ensure respect for prophets, beliefs, sacred values, religious symbols and places of worship." CNS News reports that this is part of a continuing effort by the Organization of the Islamic Conference undertaken in the wake of the controversial publication earlier this year of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. OIC’s secretariat, based in Saudi Arabia, is pressing both the United Nations and the European Union to counteract what OIC calls "wanton provocation and reckless, blasphemous libertarianism cowering behind so-called freedom of the press."