The idea of blasphemy, expression that is deemed to insult religion, has shot across the news with the recent release online of the rather amateur film ‘The Innocence of Muslims’. The anti-Islamic film insults the Prophet Mohammed, and has led to a bounty on the head of the film’s director by a Pakistani Minister. The film’s release occurred in a climate of questioning blasphemy due to the recent case in Pakistan in which a young Christian girl, with alleged severe learning difficulties, purportedly insulted Islam by destroying pages of Islam’s holy book, the Quran. The global media frenzy that’s followed has led many to question blasphemy laws, such as those in Pakistan, which demand a sentence of life in prison or the death penalty. The riots have sparked a resurgence of attention on blasphemy, but this is not a new phenomenon. One only needs to look at the 1989 infamous fatwa, Islamic legal ruling, against Salman Rushdie for his book ‘The Satanic Verses’ or the 1995 Danish Cartoon controversy to see this a long standing issue which needs to be dealt with by both governments and the Muslim community if there is to be any hope in resolving the issue.
Having studied Islamic Law and human rights I was prompted to write this piece as a reaction; what is the Islamic legal perceptive on this and can we, as human rights activists who call for a form of universal freedom of expression, seriously challenge demands for limitations of freedom of expression and archaic national laws which inhibit those of a different faith from questioning others’ religions? This is a serious difficulty, one that one cannot be solved overnight, I simply wish to challenge and open the discussion away from the overly emotive portrayal of both cases.
In Islam, one needs to separate the idea of blasphemy, one from outside Islam insulting God or the Prophet, and apostasy, an act of rejection of Islam by a Muslim. The current cases of the Pakistani child and the film ‘The Innocence of Muslims’ fall into the former category. Moreover in Islam one can be deemed a blasphemer against God or against Mohammed, which further complicates the issue. Certain Muslim intellectuals say if one insults God there is no punishment on earth, whereas those who insult the Prophet must be punished by his fellow man. With the multiple schools of thought in Islam, four major schools within the Sunni sect alone, how can one determine, on a global basis, how those accused of blasphemy should be punished? Across the world, in particular in Muslim countries, the punishment could consist of losing one’s rights, corporal punishment or the death penalty. The Pakistani minister calling for the death of Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the director of the ‘Innocence of Muslims’, clearly believes in the harsher end of the spectrum for penance. The mobs that demanded the death sentence for the young Christian girl evidently would agree.
But lets go back to basics, what would the Prophet Mohammed make of this? This is one of the key problems facing Islamic scholars, how to interpret the Quran and the Sunnah, examples from the life and teachings of the Prophet, in the present day world. The Prophet stated, “Whoever hurts a dhimmi (non-Muslim), he hurts me, and one who hurts me, hurts Allah”. Additionally the Quran states that God taught man freedom of expression and speech, which it divides into good and bad speech, suggesting that this capability is there for a reason; to strengthen one’s faith by debate and open discussion about blasphemy allegations. I believe that those of Islamic faith that desire to harm the Christian girl or the maker of the notorious film, however repellent it may be, should avoid all calls for corporeal punishment and look towards their own Prophet and take their case forward through debate, cooperation and eventual mutual understandings about others’ faiths.
In a secular world with Human Rights enshrined through multiple Covenants of the United Nations, how is blasphemy viewed and how can we protect those who allegedly commit blasphemy or those who feel they are the victims of hate speech, often in the form of blasphemy, from being harmed? Lets take the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. One is able to express themselves freely through politics, science, and history and for the purpose of this article, religion. As positive as freedom of expression seems for beliefs of truth, democracy and self-fulfilment, even the United Nations has recognised the need to limit this for the sake of others’ rights, namely that of national security and public order. However, the only reason why the cases of the ‘Innocence of Muslims’ and the young Pakistani girl have led to difficulties of public order are because of the media’s highlighting of them.
About the Author
Blasphemy is a victimless crime, nobody is actually harmed. It is not hate speech, nor is it an incitement to violence. It is irrational to link the two and to suggest the notion that anyone in a society ought to face any kind of punishment as a result of insulting a supernatural being or religious figure is nonsense. The only thing that we are doing in giving credence to ‘blasphemy’, is allowing others to dictate what we can say about their ideas, good or bad.
The more we base our morality on a vague sense of what ‘offends’ people, the more we erode at any opportunity for diversity and a reasonable discourse in life. Gay marriage offends people, but it’s nothing to do with offence, it’s about a wider question of individual rights. That is the overall framework in which this debate needs to be framed, not “do I care who I offend?”.
Seeing blasphemy as hate speech, i.e. criticising someone’s beliefs, provides an insurmountable barrier to any reasonable discussion about the relative merits of any legal, political or moral benefit or cost that a religion can offer society. As soon as I say something your religious affiliation doesn’t like, I can be imprisoned/fined/killed. For anybody who appreciates the importance of discourse and free speech, this is a sad set of beliefs to enshrine the mystical and the magical as being more important than wider societal systems of rights from a secular foundation based on equality.
The reason christianity moved on from executing people for the crime of blasphemy is that it’s ridiculous, and it (sort of) decided to evolve with the times. According to wikipedia, England’s last execution for blasphemy was in 1697. The rest of the world ought to catch up. Can we solve this overnight? No. What we can do is remain steadfast in an uncompromising way, that we remain committed to protecting freedom of speech as being of far greater importance than protecting the sensitive feelings of a divided and outdated religious group.