Blasphemy laws empower extremists: Our view
Last Friday, authorities in Saudi Arabia drove 30-year-old blogger Raif Badwai from his prison cell to the front of a mosque in the city of Jeddah and flogged him 50 times.
Badawi had been sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes for offenses that included "insulting Islam." He's scheduled to get another 50 lashes every week for the next 19 weeks.
Ordinarily, this medieval punishment in one of the world's most repressive nations would have attracted little attention — except that it came just two days after the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris and two days before Saudi officials joined the anti-terrorism march there.
Beyond the Saudis' blatant hypocrisy, there's a link between the events that should worry Americans and anyone else in the crosshairs of Islamic fundamentalism. Saudi Arabia and other Muslim nations that make blasphemy punishable by prison, flogging and even death encourage religious extremism that easily crosses national borders.
It's dangerous enough when radical clerics call for death for blasphemy based on highly dubious and selective interpretations of the Quran; it's even more destructive when a nation makes that official policy.
Whatever misgivings the Saudis claim to have when fanatics enforce blasphemy bans, they have joined Turkey and other U.S. allies in demanding that prohibitions against blasphemy be turned into international law.
In Pakistan, religious extremism has gotten so out of control that three dozen people are on death row or serving life sentences on blasphemy convictions. An informal moratorium on state executions hasn't stopped individual police, mobs or gunmen from killing those accused of blasphemy. Even the politicians and lawyers who have condemned the law, or defended clients against it, are targets.
The spread of this brand of intolerance to the West has enabled not just the occasional murder, but also the repulsive idea that Westerners who offend Islam have only themselves to blame if they're killed for it. It's not necessary to admire the crude mockery of religion to understand that repressing it goes to the heart of free expression.
The United States had its own notable brush with blasphemy in 1989, when an artist dunked a crucifix in a glass of his own urine and the resulting photo was displayed as art. There was no need of fatwas or papal edicts to condemn an image most Americans found crudely offensive. Anyone paying attention understood that religion is stronger when it doesn't require laws or death threats to safeguard it. Somehow, Christianity survived.
Would that the Muslim world extend the same spirit of tolerant confidence toward the latest issue of Charlie Hebdo.
The tabloid, bravely assembled by survivors of last week's massacre, hit the streets with a cover that depicts the prophet Mohammed in tears, with the caption "all is forgiven."
That the newspaper was able to publish a week after the slaughter of its staff, and that the 3 million copies quickly sold out, was a powerful rebuke to the terrorists' deluded attempt to scare people into silence.
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