Two thoughts on #CharlieHebdo: 1. This is not the first time people are killed for insulting the Islamic prophet Muhammad. There were numerous cases before this, from Rafiq Tağı of Azerbaijan to Theo van Gogh of Amsterdam, and it is likely to continue if nothing is done about it. As someone within the Muslim community, I think we should address this problem and stop trying to distance ourselves away from it. We need less concern about “how others perceive Islam” and more concern about “how we can help prevent such crimes from happening in the future”. These crimes are clearly rooted in ideology. There are still many respected Islamic scholars that believe that insulting the prophet is punishable by death under “specific circumstances”. Those scholars are complicit in these hideous crimes and need to be called out. 2. The people that were killed yesterday were victims, not heroes. They were brutally murdered and their families deserve our support and sympathy. But in no way was their work honorable. I think it is wrong to publish cartoons that others find hurtful, whether they are about the Holocaust (bit.ly/1HPlHHT) or the prophet Muhammad. There is a difference between supporting someones right to freedom of speech and supporting that persons speech itself.
Posted on: Thu, 08 Jan 2015 14:09:30 +0000
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