Insulting Islam

It's done by non-Muslims, by heretics who spurn Islam and turn instead to some other faith and bring the wrath of the faithful down upon them, inspiring clerics to issue fatwas against them.  Non-Muslims have felt that waxing eloquently sarcastic about the beliefs and practises of a people who claim theirs is a religion of peace, even while its history and heritage has been one of unrelenting bloodshed through forced conversion and submission, is perfectly all right.


They have discovered, to their horror, that to bring aspersions to the public light about such a deeply-held and -embraced faith is to invite the kind of opprobrium that only their worst nightmares might match.  The backlash from the fanatical faithful is enough to make the stoutest heart doubt that safety can be found in any haven anywhere on Earth.  Bloody riots, deaths by misadventure, threats and acts of terror result from taking the name of the Prophet Mohammad in vain.


Islam does not look lightly upon defamation or even casual dismissal of the tenets of its faith.  And to pound that lesson home in the most emphatic (and unempathetic) manner possible, Saudi Arabia is prepared to enact legislation to criminalize insulting Islam.  Including in social media.  With a law that could conceivably carry the burden of quite heavy penalties.

How about capital punishment?  That heavy enough of a penalty?  It's final, in any event.



What appears to have initiated this move toward regulating public respect for Islam is Saudi blogger and columnist Hamza Kashgari, 23, who was arrested for having improvidently tweeted comments considered insulting to the Prophet Mohammad.  The kind of strict Sunni Islamism that Saudi Arabia practices, Wahhabism, just happens to spawn extremism. 

Borne out by the fact that Osama bin Laden was Saudi, Sunni and the creator of al-Qaeda.  Blasphemy against Islam and anything recognized as symbolic of Islam is punishable by death in many Muslim countries.  Inclusive of Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan, among other human-rights-respecting countries of the world.