Muslims Inadvertently Call for Ban on Islam

The very same logic that Muslims cite in their ongoing efforts to criminalize anti-Islamic speech in Western nations would require the criminalization of Islam itself.

Secretary-General of the Muslim World League Mohammed al-Issa argues that “Europe must do more to … criminalize religious hate speech.” In an April 9 interview with Reuters, this prominent Saudi said: “We believe that European countries, where there is much debate now, and other countries around the world … need to … criminalize hatred and contempt for adherents of religions because this threatens the safety of the community.”

The “hatred and contempt for adherents of religions” that Muslims complain of is ecumenical code for “Islamophobia.” Thus, on April 5 Ömer Serdar, a senior official from Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party, announced that he and a “group of Turkish lawmakers will travel to the heart of Europe,” where they will “investigate whether authorities take measures against the hostility of Islamophobic discrimination in Muslims’ daily lives.” Afterwards, “they will hold meetings with state authorities during their visits to Germany, France, and Belgium” and “discuss the issue of marginalization.”

All of this is in line with policies of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the “collective voice of the Muslim World” and second-largest intergovernmental organization after the United Nations. For years — especially after a Muslim massacred a dozen people at France’s Charlie Hebdo offices for publishing satirical caricatures of Muhammad — the OIC has called on the United Nations to criminalize the “defamation of religions,” meaning criticism of Islam.

Everyone — especially Muslims — seems to miss the grand irony. If international laws would ban speech, cartoons, books, and films on the basis that they defame religions, those laws would ban the entire religion of Islam itself.

Islam is the only religion whose core texts actively, unequivocally defame other religions, including by name.

The Koran repeatedly slanders, denigrates, and blackens the reputation of other specific religions. Consider these passages about Christianity:

— Koran 5:73: “Infidels are they who say God is one of three,” a reference to the Christian Trinity.

— Koran 5:72: “Infidels are they who say God is the Christ, [Jesus] son of Mary.”

— Koran 9:30: “[T]he Christians say the Christ is the son of God … may God’s curse be upon them!”

The word “infidel” (kafir) is one of Islam’s most derogatory terms. What if a core Christian text — or even a Western cartoon — declared: “Infidels are they who say Muhammad is the prophet of God — may God’s curse be upon them”?

The grandest irony of all is that the “defamation” that Muslims complain about — and that prompts great violence and bloodshed around the world — revolves around things like cartoons and movies, which are made by individuals who represent only themselves. On the other hand, Islam itself, through its holiest and most authoritative texts, denigrates and condemns — in a word, “defames” — all other religions.

(Ibrahim, “Muslims Inadvertently Call for Ban on Islam,” FrontPageMag Online, 4/26/18).