UN Appoints Great-Grandson of Caliph Who Opposes Free Speech as Human Rights Chief

September 27, 2014 by Daniel Greenfield 4 Comments

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam. He is completing a book on the international challenges America faces in the 21st century.

3863919

 Print This Post

The UN is not just a joke. It’s also a really expensive waste of money. But sometimes it can be hard to remember that.

Prince Zeid Ra’ad Zeid Al Hussein was officially appointed by the 193-Nation UN General Assembly to become the next United Nations human rights chief in Geneva.

“Prince Zeid’s work on sexual violence and his leadership on the international criminal court give a good foundation for this new role,” said Peggy Hicks, global advocacy director at Human Rights Watch.

I bet.

Jordanian law protects the perpetrators of honor crimes.

The section of the penal code most frequently invoked on behalf of perpetrators of “honor” killings is article 98. This statute mandates reduction of penalty for a perpetrator (of either gender) who commits a crime in a “state of great fury [or “fit of fury”] resulting from an unlawful and dangerous act on the part of the victim.

Moreover, courts may further halve the sentence if the victim’s family “waives” its right to file a complaint of the crime.

In murders for “honor,” given the family’s complicity in the crime, the family nearly always “waives” the right to file a complaint.66 Thus, “honor” killers may receive sentences of six months—and often do. If a killer has served that much time awaiting trial, the sentence may be commuted to time served and he may walk away a free man.

Article 98 was applied, for example, in a 2001 case in which the defendant had killed his sister “after seeing a man leave her house

Prince Zeid’s work on sexual violence has obviously been exemplary.

So what are Zeid’s qualifications for the job? Well he is a cousin of the King of Jordan. As a result he’s been appointed to a variety of positions. He’s also a great-grandson of Caliph Hussein bin Ali, who claimed to rule all the Arabs, before he got taken down by the House of Saud.

(And if you think the Saudi gang still don’t resent all Europeans over it and want revenge, you don’t know the Middle East well.)

The UN has often been a joke, but appointing a member of an unelected monarchy (who is also a claimant for the thrones of Iraq and Syria, good luck with that) as human rights chief is a sublime gag.

It’s like the UN is desperately trying to let us all in on on the joke.

A strong advocate of international justice, Prince Zeid had extensive involvement in the creation of the International Criminal Court.

I feel so much better now. But don’t get any ideas about the Prince. His royal highness remains a firm Cartoonophobe.

Jordan’s voting record on the highly divisive attempt to force U.N. states to criminalize the “defamation of religion” leaves a huge question mark about how aggressively Ambassador Zeid will defend free speech in the sphere of religion, where this right is constantly under attack at both the national and international level.

During both of Ambassador Zeid’s periods as Jordan’s ambassador to the U.N., Jordan voted in favor of these resolutions when they were introduced at the General Assembly.

Jordan’s voting record in the U.N. is consistent with the country’s domestic record on blasphemy. In 2006, two newspaper editors who reprinted cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad previously published by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten were sentenced to two months of imprisonment. In 2011, Jordan initiated a trial in absentia against Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, the creator of the offending cartoon, as well as 19 Danish journalists and editors who had published the cartoon in various news outlets. In 2009, Jordanian poet Eslam Samhan was sentenced to imprisonment and a fine for blasphemy after having included Quranic verses in his poetry. It was developments such as these that the 2010 resolution on defamation of religion hailed and sought to enact at the international level, turning human rights into a weapon against religious dissent and nonconformism rather than principles protecting the freedom of conscience and pluralism.

Who better than a descendant of a Caliph to push for a global Islamic Caliphate.