Opinion Writer: January 8,
2015
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.
