We all remember when the Danish cartoonist "blasphemed" the Prophet. We all remember because we came out in fists of rage, trying to rectify the wrong so brutally thrust upon us, as a Muslim brotherhood, an Ummah. I, for one, didn't agree then, and continue to disagree, with the choice of my Ummah to take up the matter as though a battle. What you can take up is the overused example of the "Hadood Ordinances" or the supposed "Shariah" in Pakistan. (I'm going to overuse it some more.) That, you can take up, because that is more than my personal view. It is the view of Pakistan perceived by the masses. It is the law of the land, shoved down my throat as I live in this gorgeous democratic nation. This is the battle I pick.
Somehow, our misgivings and our shortfalls are always waved in our face by the international media. We're always publicized for our drug snorting sportsmen or our Pashtun brothers beating their women to a pulp. Similarly, our Arab brothers and sisters are known because of the fact that women aren't allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia and because limbs are lost if you steal. That's known (possibly also because I personally am drawn to such news and pay more attention to it - ergo, its possibly just all in my head). The small kindnesses are not. The small kindnesses of everyone else are known and their misgivings are not. The blasphemy laws instated in Ireland only caught the media's attention when bloggers decided to take action, create awareness and bring out the big guns and take on the Parliament.
What this website now states for the Irish government to condemn, are various quotes from the likes of Jesus and Prophet Muhammad, to Bjork, Salman Rushdie, Twain, Dawkins and Pope Benedict XVI; and challenges the Irish government to proceed with blasphemy penalties on each. Bravo! I don't know about what the others said and in what context, but considering Dawkins was pulled out of his "God Delusion" it leaves little to the imagination, but that said, I know the quote used for the Prophet was pulled out of context. This leaves me to judge how the quotes of the 23 others might have been similarly misconstrued. But that's for each one of us to understand on their own. I like what these bloggers/activists are getting at; there ought be no blasphemy law that curbs freedom of speech. I agree with that much. But what I do not appreciate is the misleading first couple of paragraphs.
The website condemns this law because it "is both silly and dangerous. It is silly because medieval religious laws have no place in a modern secular republic, where the criminal law should protect people and not ideas. [agreed] And it is dangerous because it incentivises religious outrage, and because Islamic States led by Pakistan are already using the wording of this Irish law to promote new blasphemy laws at UN level." This was posted on thier blog on the first of January, 2010 (happy new year!). The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) moved a resolution in the UN in March 2009, asking the UN to recognize a blasphemy law similar to the sort now in place in Ireland. For obvious reasons, the UN refused. The OIC is an association of some 56 nations and Pakistan pushed the motion on behalf of the OIC at the said UN Convention. The bloggers/activists point their fingers at Pakistan trying to push similar motions in the UN, now. If I were just to read this on its own, I'd take it to be true and condemn my own Ummah for being such fools, as they have in the past. That I knew of this resolution when it was moved in the UN earlier last year, is the only reason I did not reach such a conclusion.
So, no, Pakistan or anyone else is in fact not using this action of Ireland to push its own agenda elsewhere; don't flatter yourselves. That said, I think the concept behind all this is something in the right direction. I think we could use more unconventional solutions to problems such as this. But Pakistan could also use a break. Can't we go back to picking on Iran again?
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