Why allow anti-defamation for religions?

From today's Dispatches from the Culture Wars, Ed has a series of articles about religion and the public sphere. I'm focusing on one here today:  "Why Pan-Religious Cooperation Could be Bad".


In the first story, Ed links to the AP story about King Abdullah's speech in Madrid:

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia exhorted followers of the world's leading faiths to turn away from extremism and embrace a spirit of reconciliation, saying at the start of an interfaith conference Wednesday that history's great conflicts were not caused by religion itself but by its misinterpretation.

...

Abdullah's comments came at the start of a Saudi-sponsored gathering that aims to bring Muslims, Christians and Jews closer together at a time when the world often puts the three faiths at odds.

...

The Saudis have billed the gathering — which also includes Buddhist and Hindu participants, as well as practitioners of several Eastern religions — as a strictly religious affair. There's to be no mention of hot-button issues such as the war in Iraq, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Iranian nuclear ambitions or rising oil prices.

His point of contention is that this seems to be rather hypocritical from the previous statements made by the king:

But remember, this is the same oppressive dictator who previously proposed that the three Abrahamic religions should join forces against....well, everyone else...

and

Abdullah, like many others, has called for an international law prohibiting "defamation" of religion. As I said a few days ago, I'm just not inclined to accept lectures about ethics from a brutal dictator whose regime beheads people for being of the wrong religion, puts gay people to death and has roving gangs (they call them police) whose job is to beat women who leave the house unattended by a male relative. You're gonna lecture me on ethics, you fascist asshole?

I had heard about the conference listening to the BBC, but didn't really think much about it until Ed wrote on the topic. I (as is usually the case) agree with Ed's contentions. I also ask, "Why should religions get an anti-defamation allowance?" I mean, apart from having to first define what constitutes a "religion" (Does a non-theistic Buddhism or Confucianism count? Does the FSM count? What about cults like "Aum Shinrikyo" or small "break-away" sects like the "Branch Dividians"?), one has to constantly worry about whether something someone says about a religion would be found to be defamation of that religion by any one follower of it. Even pronouncements of one religious holy text about other religions (e.g., "Thou shalt have no gods before me.") could be construed by someone else as defaming their religion.

In addition, many religions don't have a strict hierarchy. Even Christianity, with its myriad churches within Protestantism doesn't have a single "hierarchy", and there would be calls of bloody murder (or an appropriate equivalent) if one were suggested. Apart from very few instances (such as the Anglicanism, Catholicism and Mormonism), there isn't one person (or "supreme council") that can make judgments for the entire religion (and you'll note that all three instances I named are variants of Christianity - although Mormonism is a wide variant).

So if there were an international "defamation" law for religions, who would have standing to bring suit? Would it be anyone who wishes to do so if they are representing a very horizontally ordered religion (like FSM), or would suits only be heard if it were brought by a supreme leader or supreme council (thus negating the ability of religious organizations like FSM from taking part)? How would the law take into account statements made by one priest that goes against the decision of the supreme leader/council?

I propose that if religions do end up getting an international law prohibiting defamation, that someone set up a "Church of Humanism and Atheism" (or something similar) to justify demanding equal non-defamation of humanism and atheism. (Of course, religiously un-free countries like Saudi Arabia would likely be one of the first to deny recognition of such an institution.)

Although the potential limitations to freedoms of speech are also quite obvious, I'll let commenters at Ed's page get on that one.