Here is some more history about the 1966 UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Article 18 which I quoted in the February 2012 blog:
The General Assembly in 1981 adopted the Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on religion or belief. It remains the most important codification of the principle of freedom of relgion and belief. The articles remained almost unchanged from 1966 to 1981. Several states had reservations. Romania, Poland, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and the U.S.S.R. objected because it didn't take sufficient account of atheistic beliefs. The Organization of Islamic Conference objected to any provision that was contrary to Shari'a law. So, the roadblocks to Article 18 have and still are due to the objection of atheistic and Muslim states.
Here are some contemporary examples. As reported in the Mar. 10 World magazine by Jamie Dean, more than 2 years after Iranian authorities imprisoned Christian pastor Youcef Nadarkhani on charges of apostasy, the pastor's attorney delivered sobering news on Feb. 21: an Iranian court may have upheld a death sentence against the 34 year old husband and father of two sons. Authorities arrested Nadarkhani in 2009, charging him with apostasy, or renouncing Islam. Nadarkhani refuted the charges, saying that he had never embraced Islam. Many believe the government may hang him before he has a chance for appeal. The court agrees that he never practiced Islam as an adult, but was still guilty because he was born into a Muslim home.
If the Christian pastor is executed, it would be a gross violation of Article 18.
The next example is from the USA. Mindy Belz reports: 15 months after the Middle East revolutions began, where are the Arab Spring heroes? Egyptian intellectual
Essam Abdallah has the reason. the U.S. Islamist lobbies with an ear at the White House have ensured that there aren't any democracy heroes emerging. He states that months into the Arab Spring, the Egyptian freedom fighters realized that the Western powers, and the Obama Administration have put their support behind the new authoritarians (Muslim Brotherhood etc.) The lobbyists for CAIR, Islamic Society of North America and other such groups now form the greatest Islamic radical lobby ever to penetrate the White House, Congress, State Dept., and military. Attorney General Eric Holder has removed 1000 presentations on Islam from FBI training due to the use of such terms as "Jihad". The President has consistently sided with Islamic extremists in such places as Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Libya, and Syria. U.S. policy has turned a blind eye to the widespread attempt to exterminate non Muslim people groups during the Arab Spring. Not one of the changes in government in the middle east has resulted in more freedom of faith. The only advance is for the iron boot of Shari'a law as promoted by the U.S. administration.
