02 November 2011

'Be God's curse upon you!': the dangers of mixing satire and Islam

.... If you promise a perfect world for all, whether a socialist paradise, a thousand-year Reich, or a verdant afterlife filled with virgins and sherbet, then anyone who stands in the way of it is clearly evil, and unlimited violence can be justified in pursuing it. "He who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities", as Voltaire said.

Luckily, most of these utopian ideologies have been discredited or defanged. Few people defend the ideas of racial purity or Marxist historical progress any more. Christians rarely break people upon the wheel or cut people in half for blaspheming. But one ideology seems not to have received this message. [telegraph.co.uk] Read more