Blasphemy and the law of fanatics, Fareed Zakaria
As they went on their rampage, the men who killed 12 people in Paris this week yelled
that they had “avenged the prophet.” They followed in the path
of other terrorists who have bombed newspaper offices, stabbed a filmmaker and
killed writers and translators, all to mete out what they believe is the proper
Koranic punishment for blasphemy. But in fact, the Koran prescribes no
punishment for blasphemy. Like so many of the most fanatical and violent
aspects of Islamic terrorism today, the idea that Islam requires that insults
against the prophet Muhammad be met with violence is a creation of politicians
and clerics to serve a political agenda.
One holy book is deeply concerned with blasphemy: the Bible. In the Old
Testament, blasphemy and blasphemers are condemned and prescribed harsh
punishment. The best-known passage on this is Leviticus 24:16 : “Anyone who blasphemes
the name of the Lord is to be put to death. The entire assembly must stone
them. Whether foreigner or native-born, when they blaspheme the Name they are
to be put to death.”
By contrast, the word blasphemy appears nowhere in the Koran. (Nor,
incidentally, does the Koran anywhere forbid creating images of Muhammad,
though there are commentaries and traditions — “hadith” — that do, to guard against idol worship.)Islamic scholar Maulana Wahiduddin Khan has
pointed out that “there are more than 200 verses in the Koran, which reveal
that the contemporaries of the prophets repeatedly perpetrated the same act,
which is now called ‘blasphemy or abuse of the Prophet’ . . . but nowhere does
the Koran prescribe the punishment of lashes, or death, or any other physical
punishment.” On several occasions, Muhammad treated people who ridiculed him
and his teachings with understanding and kindness. “In Islam,” Khan says,
“blasphemy is a subject of intellectual discussion rather than a subject of
physical punishment.”
Somebody forgot to tell the terrorists. But the gruesome and bloody
belief the jihadis have adopted is all too common in the Muslim world, even
among so-called moderate Muslims — that blasphemy and apostasy are grievous
crimes against Islam and should be punished fiercely. Many Muslim-majority countries have laws against blasphemy
and apostasy — and in some places, they are enforced.
Pakistan is now the poster child for the anti-blasphemy campaign gone
wild. In March, at least 14 people were on death row in that country, and 19
were serving life sentences, according to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
The owner of the country’s largest media group has been sentenced to 26 years in prison because one of his
channels broadcast a devotional song about Muhammad’s daughter while reenacting
a wedding. (Really.) And Pakistan is not alone. Bangladesh, Malaysia, Egypt,
Turkey and Sudan have all used blasphemy laws to jail and harass people. In
moderate Indonesia, 120 people have been detained for this reason since 2003.
Saudi Arabia forbids the practice of any religion other than its own Wahhabi
version of Islam.
The Pakistani case is instructive, because its extreme version
of anti-blasphemy law is relatively recent and a product of politics. Mohammed Zia ul-Haq, Pakistan’s president
during the late 1970s and 1980s, wanted to marginalize the democratic and
liberal opposition, and he embraced Islamic fundamentalists, no matter how
extreme. He passed a series of laws Islamizing Pakistan, including a law that
recommended the death penalty or life imprisonment for insulting Muhammad in
any way.
When governments try to curry favor with fanatics, eventually the
fanatics take the law into their own hands. In Pakistan, jihadis have killed
dozens of people whom they accuse of blasphemy, including a brave politician,Salmaan Taseer, who dared to call the blasphemy
law a “black law.”
We should fight terrorism. But we should also fight the source of the
problem. It’s not enough for Muslim leaders to condemn people who kill those
they consider as blasphemers if their own governments endorse the idea of
punishing blasphemy at the very same time. The U.S. religious freedom commission
and the U.N. Human Rights Committee have both
declared that blasphemy laws violate universal human rights because they
violate freedom of speech and expression. They are correct.
In Muslim-majority countries, no one dares to dial back these laws. In
Western countries, no one confronts allies on these issues. But blasphemy is
not a purely domestic matter, of concern only to those who worry about
countries’ internal affairs. It now sits on the bloody crossroad between
radical Islamists and Western societies. It cannot be avoided anymore. Western
politicians, Muslim leaders and intellectuals everywhere should point out that
blasphemy is something that does not exist in the Koran and should not exist in
the modern world.
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