13 February 2015

First victim of “blasphemy laws” would be Islam itself

Soon after Muslim gunmen killed 12 people at Charlie Hebdo offices, which published satirical caricatures of Muslim prophet Muhammad, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) -- the “collective voice of the Muslim world” and second largest inter-governmental organization after the United Nations -- is again renewing calls for the UN to criminalize “blasphemy” against Islam, or what it more ecumenically calls, the “defamation of religions.”

Yet the OIC seems to miss one grand irony: if international laws would ban cartoons, books, and films on the basis that they defame Islam, they would also, by logical extension, have to ban the entire religion of Islam itself -- the only major religion whose core texts actively and unequivocally defame other religions, including by name. [The Commentator] Read more