INTERNATIONAL LAW AND THE DEFAMATION OF RELIGION CONUNDRUM

Since the late 1990s there has been a concerted effort by many Muslim-majority countries and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to incorporate a ban on defamation of religion into international law. In 2011, the UN Human Rights Council adopted, with the support of the OIC, Resolution 16/18, which shifted away from the idea of defamation to focus more narrowly on combating religious intolerance. However the idea of banning defamation still has currency. The US should continually strive to contextualize this issue, to emphasize non-legal responses, and to recommend legal responses that are based upon narrowly defined legal categories such as hate speech.