Minarets vs. Churches

So the Dar al Islam did not like the Swiss minaret ban--but they have no problem with what's going on in their own backyard:

While Muslim leaders criticized the Nov. 29 vote in Switzerland that banned construction of minarets, they don’t support Christians who want to build churches in some Islamic countries. Restrictions in Egypt have exacerbated sectarian violence and discrimination, say Copts, a 2,000-year-old denomination that comprises about 10 percent of the population.

The day after the Swiss vote, Ali Gomaa, one of Egypt’s top Muslim clerics, called the decision “an attempt to insult the feelings of the Muslim community in and outside of Switzerland.”

Copts quickly said that neither Gomaa nor any other Islamic leader mentioned the Christian situation in Egypt.

“Without the merest attempt to put our house in order, are we in any position to taunt others to put theirs?” Youssef Sidhom, editor-in-chief of the Cairo-based Egyptian Coptic weekly newspaper El-Watani, said in a telephone interview. “They should be ashamed.”

The contrast between criticism of the Swiss and silence about local parallels isn’t limited to Egypt. Censure of Switzerland, where about 5 percent of the population is Muslim, was widespread in Islamic countries where Christians face restrictions on practicing their faith.

Read the whole thing. The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) is mentioned in the piece. This is the same organization that sponsored the "Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam" as a counter-declaration to the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Cairo Declaration sounds fairly compatible with universal norms of human rights based solely in natural law and those principles accessible through philosophical reflection--that is, the exercise of human reason without any necessary reference to faith--until one hits the last two articles of the Cairo Declaration:

Article 24 All the rights and freedoms stipulated in this Declaration are subject to the Islamic Shari'ah.

Article 25 The Islamic Shari'ah is the only source of reference for the explanation or clarification to any of the articles of this Declaration.

In other words, according to the body which represents all the Islamic countries, Islam recognizes no human rights except what is conferred by Islamic religious law. Where, pray tell, does that leave religious freedom? And who among us infidels knows which rights Islam is willing to grant us?