Home Open space Against The Caricature of Prophet Muhammad

Against The Caricature of Prophet Muhammad

Freedom of speech and expression is just another substitute for the insult and domination that West wants to perpetrate on its counterpart; Islam.

1067
0

Annemarie Schimmel in his book And Muhammad is his messenger said, “West has never understood the stature and respect of Prophet Muhammad ﷺ in Islam. They think of him as just some other respectable person of humanity.” This is the reason why, very often, they try to use the freedom of speech and expression to crack jokes about him and make his caricatures. Consequently, when Muslims are enraged, they do not understand why they are going mad over just one joke or cartoon.

According to me, this confusion arises because of the Allah’s cynosure in the Islamic paradigm, as it is said, “everything comes from Allah and returns to him,” unlike Christianity, where Jesus holds the pivot.  Similarly, they think of Qur’an as some book written by Muhammad ﷺ and try to insult it by burning or simply repudiating it. West thinks, just like Bible is a book and we use it for education or spirituality, Muslims must regard their Qur’an as same. Similarly, they try to equalize the respect of Prophet Muhammad with other Prophets like Jeremiah, Isaac, Israel etc. West has to understand that they can not compare their version of respect for Book and Prophet with that of Muslims. Judea-Christendom shall know, that Prophet Muhammad ﷺ is no simple human being they can make joke about, and he holds the highest respect and the authority in the eyes of Muslims. This can be explained by a following quote in Persian, “Baad az Khuda tu ae, qissa mukhtasar,” which means, “It’s simple and crisp, after Allah, whatever there is, that is you.”

While, the West must understand it with time, my point is, even in the western and global values, making caricatures of Muhammad ﷺ isn’t justified, and the competent authorities must deal with it, seriously. It can not apply the Voltaire-an maxim, “I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it.” Voltaire, being an atheist, can say this, but it shall be known that, atheism is not a universal value, and Voltaire is not a God. Additionally, it is an ideological position posited by the liberals, instead of being the basic premise of the globe. The basic premise, instead of freedom of speech and expression, shall be mutual respect for each other.

First of all, freedom of speech never means hurting others, as even the great John Stuart Mill in his On Liberty, after justifying that why should we give absolute liberty to the people, talks about restraining the liberty for the societal good. Even if we concede, that he didn’t mean this through his ‘societal good restraints,’ the society shall ensure that freedom of speech and expression shall never be regarded absolute in any civilization. Because, if accepted so, to what extent is it justified to use the word ‘nigger’ for the Blacks in USA? Or, can we use the word ‘bhangi aur chamaar’ for the scheduled castes of India?

Secondly, coming down from the philosophical argument, even in practicality, freedom of speech and expression hasn’t been accepted anywhere in the history in toto. Around the world, there are a lot of set standards for expression which aren’t expected to be breached i.e academic standards, basic talking standards, journalistic standards. Also, many countries have the sedition laws, which prohibit any kind of utterance, which can be deemed as sedition i.e 124A in India, for instance. Additionally, talking about Holocaust isn’t legally allowed in the Germany, France prohibits wearing Hijab in public, and these are only few of the examples that I know.

Freedom of speech and expression is just another substitute for the insult and domination that West wants to perpetrate on its counterpart; Islam. It’s a theoretical abstraction, particularly used as a weapon of politics to demean and insult others. As the western paradigm, from Prometheus to the Roman Catholic Church,, has been perpetuating jealousy, and the competition to subjugate others. This is just another arrow, through which West is trying to apply it’s racist ‘civilized-barbarian’ binary to the contemporary Islamic world. While the liberals around the world might support it as a holy decree, but the ‘sensible-s’ around the world will recognize the charade and reject it in it’s entirety. Humanity, instead of learning of liberal values like ‘freedom of speech and expression,’ shall learn the Islamic values of mutual respect imbibed in the following verse of Qur’an, “O believers! Do not insult what they invoke besides Allah.” The salvation lies in the respect and tolerance, not in the hate and insults.

LEAVE A REPLY