The Foundation Against Islamophobia and Racism (FAIR) according to its press release is a newly formed NZ-based independent Muslim human rights advocacy organisation. Instead of just being against racism, however, it is against Islamophobia and racism, which indicates that they see race as separate from religion. This is reasonable, as being Muslim is not a race. Any race can be Muslim.
Islam as a religion or ideology has no human rights, so human rights can not and should not be called upon to protect religion from criticism. This new group looks very much like an attempt to bring in blasphemy laws through the back door.
Only people can have rights so the fact that they call themselves a human rights advocacy organisation is misleading as they are looking to clamp down on criticism of Islam. In the screenshot below you will see that Anti-Muslim literature is one of the options. Any writing criticising the ideas and values of Islam can and will be considered to be anti-Muslim.
Islam’s Koran and the Hadiths are profoundly anti-Jew and anti-Non-Muslim but our society tolerates their literature that includes calls to violence. Muslims in New Zealand are free to teach anti-Non-Muslim sentiment inside their schools and mosques and they are free to criticise Christianity, Jews and other non-Muslims.
This fact, however, will not stop this new organisation from trying to take away the free speech of non-Muslim New Zealanders.
One of the key projects of FAIR is to provide a Report Islamophobia (http://report.islamophobia.) portal where victims can report incidents.
The organisation exists to advocate for the human rights of Muslims […]
This organisation looks set to carry on where ex Human Rights Commissioner Susan Devoy left off by creating a hate speech/hate crime database with the end goal of creating religious blasphemy laws.
Currently, there is no register of hate crime and Islamophobic incidents and as a result, there is no data to analyse and strategise on how to combat such incidents. Going forward we hope to work closely with researchers, community organisations and government agencies to collectively create a safe and tolerant society.
Buckle up, readers, because “safe and tolerant” are code words for “big brother will be watching you”. From now on you can expect snitches working for this organisation to be trolling and reporting your social media posts to the hate speech database which will be used to hound people out of their jobs and to push for hate speech laws. Also, be prepared for a sudden rash of Fake Hate crime incidents as has been seen happening overseas again and again.
University of Waikato academic, Dr Arama Rata, said, “The Crown has failed its duty to protect Muslim and other communities of colour from hate crime. Systematically collecting hate crime data is the very least the Crown could be doing. It should not have taken the loss of 51 lives, and it should not be left to members of the affected community to undertake this work, unsupported. However, its encouraging to know these crucial data will soon exist.”
www.fair.net.nz
A hate speech/crime database would not have prevented the terror attack in Christchurch. The system of checks and balances that failed to prevent an unfit Australian from gaining firearms and ammunition in New Zealand is what needs addressing. I believe that this organisation is a lobby group with the long term goal of getting religious blasphemy and hate speech laws passed. The database is the tool that they intend to use to achieve their goal.