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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