In Nigeria, 46 churches have been burnt and ten people killed following riots triggered by the cartoons of Charlie Hebdo.
On 9 January when French security forces cornered and killed the Parisian Islamists, Bishop Michael Nazir Ali drew an equivalence between the ‘Charlie’ terrorists and governments which executed people for blasphemy: ‘Many Muslim countries are doing judicially what those in Paris are doing extra-judicially. The Organization of Islamic Countries have campaigned for many years to bring in an internationally recognised crime of the defamation of religion. This is not therefore just about radical Islam. It is about the tendency among Muslims to suppress criticism rather than answer it.’
Mainstream Islamic view
Rod Liddle noted in the Sunday Times 11 January: ‘It is only in Islamic states that people risk being put to death for blasphemy… . It is not just Muslim “extremists” who wish to punish people for apostasy and blasphemy; it is the view of the mainstream Islamic world. The difference is only between whether the transgressors should be killed or merely imprisoned. …The problem cannot be assuaged by… making… arguments that insist – against all the evidence – that all religions are alike. They are not.’
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a convert from Islam in Somalia, wrote in The Times on 10 January: ‘When it comes to white supremacists, we don’t shy away from linking their violence to the ideas that inspire them, but when it comes to Islamists we refuse to recognise that this is an ideological battle that’s embedded in the religion of Muhammed and the Koran… . Even if all these grievances were met they would still continue to be at war. They will not rest till the whole world is subjected to Islam … . It’s not just a war on the West, it’s a war on moderate Muslims and apostates like myself’.
Bishop Nazir Ali referred to those media who were acknowledging that they were now self-censoring so as not to give offence. ‘This means that the radical Islamists have won’, he said.
De facto blasphemy law
Lord Carey made the same point in the Sunday Times on 11 January: ‘A de facto blas-phemy law is operating in Britain today. The fact is that publishers and newspapers live in fear of criticising Islam… .We need not worry about taking the vast majority of Muslims with us. They are much more offended by violence committed in their name than by cartoons or images of the prophet.’
Nazir Ali noted that the media refuses to understand the background to these events and how they can be related to certain interpretations of Islam. ‘All religions are fallen and Islam is no exception. What we need to recognise is that what is happening is not limited to radical Islamists. There has been 50 years of teaching in many mosques and madrassas about this interpretation of Islam that has led to this situation. Many moderate Muslims are challenging this, for example in Egypt and Pakistan. As we are non-Muslims we cannot say what Islam is about. We can only judge by what is happening.’
A few days later Professor Nigel Biggar, the Anglican Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at Oxford, wrote to The Times: ‘In a liberal society there should be a legal right to say things that other people might happen to find offensive. But morally responsible citizens of such a society will not say things with the intention of causing offence; they will say them with the intention of voicing valuable truths. Even if there is a legal right to spit on other people’s sacred cows for the sheer fun of it, there is no moral permission.’
Liberal inconsistency
It is ironic that many of those supporting ‘Je suis Charlie’ and the right to offend fail to see the inconsistency in continuing to suppress and silence those who refuse to counsel for abortion, or gay sex, or who advocate that children need both a mother and a father.
At least Matthew Parris, who is openly gay, recognized the need for consistency when he wrote in The Times 10 January, ‘I would always support a person’s right to insult or mock religion, or gays, or women, or men, or anyone or anything else. I was among the rather small minority that opposed Britain’s recent laws criminalising “hate speech”’.
Most persecuted
Jews have responded with ‘Je Suis Juif ’. How might Christians who are the most persecuted religious group on earth, mostly by Muslims, respond? Since Jesus was executed for blasphemy, since in our baptism we die with Christ and rise in solidarity with him, would it be ‘Je suis de Jesus’ (since we are not the Messiah)?
