In March, the United Nations Human Rights Council adopted a non-binding resolution for member countries upholding Religious Freedom over Freedom of Speech.
Practically, the resolution urges member countries to work for a world where forms of defamation of religion, made under the guise of freedom of speech, are considered an affront to human dignity. Because they restricted the freedom of adherents of a religion they would not deserve the protection of laws upholding freedom of speech.
The move has been criticised by many as limiting human rights. But it should be seen in the context of the ever deepening debate between proponents of religion and those of secularism. Those who uphold the good of religion are now asking what's next in the secularist's armoury or gun-sights. Secularists who seek legitimacy are asking where we can look for a foundation for values if we don't want to look to religion.
The consensus among those who agree to the resolution is that human dignity is a foundational criterion which can privilege freedom of religion over freedom of speech. Human dignity provides boundaries that restrict individual human rights and the human rights of groups and associations, if those rights infringe on human dignity.
How human dignity is established in a way that both religionists and secularists could commit to will be the next debate. Unlike many debates the United Nations has opened, and has been criticised for, because they have pitted the West against non-West, this one must deal with history and heritage. It cannot be hijacked by those who want to deny the past in order to build the present and future.
The concept of human dignity has a glorious history in both religious and secular disciplines, and across the East-West divide. The history of how both disciplines have developed the concept can help place human rights and freedom of speech inside boundaries that not only assure life for all, but leave room for a purpose for life for all.
Not only religions oppose secularists' demand that freedom of religion give way to freedom of speech in upholding human rights. A secular national court has held the human dignity of the members of a religion to take priority over a secular organisation's right to use what was determined to be religious imagery in order to promote its own aims. Many had considered this use to amount to religious defamation.
In April this year, Germany's highest court ruled