Early and medieval Islam According to Islamic sources
Nadr ibn al-Harith, who was an Arab Pagan doctor from Taif, used to tell stories of
Rustam and Isfandiyar to the Arabs and scoffed Muhammad. After the
battle of Badr, al-Harith was captured and, in retaliation, Muhammad ordered his execution in hands of
Ali. According to certain hadiths, after Mecca's fall
Muhammad ordered a number of enemies executed. Based on this early jurists postulated that
sabb al-Nabi (abuse of the Prophet) was a crime "so heinous that repentance was disallowed and
summary execution was required".
Sadakat Kadri writes that the actual prosecutions for blasphemy in the Muslim historical record "are vanishingly infrequent". One of the "few known cases" was that of a Christian accused of insulting the Islamic Prophet Muhammad. It ended in an acquittal in 1293, though it was followed by a protest against a decision led by the famed and strict jurist
Ibn Taymiyya.
In the 20th and 21st century " in
Den Haag,
Netherlands In recent decades
Islamic revivalists have called for its enforcement on the grounds that criminalizing hostility toward Islam will safeguard communal cohesion. Over 50 people accused of blasphemy have been murdered before their respective trials were over, and prominent figures who opposed blasphemy laws (
Salman Taseer, the former governor of
Punjab, and
Shahbaz Bhatti, the Federal Minister for Minorities) have been assassinated. In Islamic nations, thousands of individuals have been arrested and punished for blasphemy of Islam. Moreover, several Islamic nations have argued in the United Nations that blasphemy against Muhammad is unacceptable, and that laws should be passed worldwide to proscribe it. In September 2012, the
Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC), who has sought for a universal blasphemy law over a decade, revived these attempts. Separately, the Human Rights Commission of the OIC called for "an international code of conduct for media and social media to disallow the dissemination of incitement material". Non-Muslim nations that do not have blasphemy laws, have pointed to abuses of blasphemy laws in Islamic nations, and have disagreed. Notwithstanding, controversies raised in the non-Muslim world, especially over depictions of
Muhammad, questioning issues relating to the
religious offense to minorities in secular countries. A key case was the 1989 fatwa against English author
Salman Rushdie for his 1988 book entitled
The Satanic Verses, the title of which refers to an account that Muhammad, in the course of revealing the Quran,
received a revelation from Satan and incorporated it therein until made by Allah to retract it. Several translators of his book into foreign languages have been murdered. In the UK, many supporters of Salman Rushdie and his publishers advocated unrestricted freedom of expression and the abolition of the
British blasphemy laws. As a response,
Richard Webster wrote
A Brief History of Blasphemy in which he discussed freedom to publish books that may cause distress to minorities.
Notable modern cases involving individuals Assassination of Farag Foda , second from the right
Farag Foda (also Faraj Fawda; 1946 – 9 June 1992), was a prominent Egyptian professor, writer, columnist, and human rights activist. He was assassinated on 9 June 1992 by members of Islamist group
al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya after being accused of blasphemy by a committee of clerics (
ulama) at
Al-Azhar University. In a statement claimed responsibility for the killing, Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya accused Foda of being an
apostate from Islam, advocating the
separation of religion from the state, and favouring the existing legal system in Egypt rather than the application of
Sharia (Islamic law).
Imprisonment of Arifur Rahman In September 2007, Bangladeshi cartoonist
Arifur Rahman depicted in the daily
Prothom Alo a boy holding a cat conversing with an elderly man. The man asks the boy his name, and he replies "Babu". The older man chides him for not mentioning the name of Muhammad before his name. He then points to the cat and asks the boy what it is called, and the boy replies "Muhammad the cat". Bangladesh does not have a blasphemy law but groups said the cartoon ridiculed Muhammad, torched copies of the paper and demanded that Rahman be executed for blasphemy. As a result, Bangladeshi police detained Rahman and confiscated copies of
Prothom Alo in which the cartoon appeared.
Sudanese teddy bear blasphemy case In November 2007, British schoolteacher
Gillian Gibbons, who taught middle-class Muslim and Christian children in Sudan, was convicted of insulting Islam by allowing her class of six-year-olds to name a teddy bear "Muhammad". On 30 November, thousands of protesters took to the streets in Khartoum, demanding Gibbons's execution after imams denounced her during
Friday prayers. Many Muslim organizations in other countries publicly condemned the Sudanese over their reactions as Gibbons did not set out to cause offence. She was released into the care of the British embassy in Khartoum and left Sudan after two British Muslim members of the
House of Lords met President
Omar al-Bashir.
Asia Bibi blasphemy case The
Asia Bibi blasphemy case involved a
Pakistani Christian woman, Aasiya Noreen (born 1971; better known as Asia Bibi convicted of
blasphemy by a Pakistani court, receiving a sentence of death by
hanging in 2010. In June 2009, Noreen was involved in an argument with a group of Muslim women with whom she had been harvesting berries after the other women grew angry with her for drinking the same water as them. She was subsequently accused of insulting the
Islamic Prophet Muhammad, a charge she denied, and was arrested and imprisoned. In November 2010, a
Sheikhupura judge sentenced her to death. If executed, Noreen would have been the first woman in Pakistan to be lawfully killed for blasphemy. The verdict, which was reached in a district court and needed to be upheld by a superior court, received worldwide attention. Various petitions, including one that received 400,000 signatures, were organized to protest Noreen's imprisonment, and
Pope Benedict XVI publicly called for the charges against her to be dismissed. She received less sympathy from her neighbors and Islamic religious leaders in the country, some of whom adamantly called for her to be executed. Christian minorities minister
Shahbaz Bhatti and Muslim politician
Salmaan Taseer were both assassinated for advocating on her behalf and opposing the blasphemy laws. Noreen's family went into hiding after receiving death threats, some of which threatened to kill Asia if released from prison. Governor
Salmaan Taseer and Pakistan's Minority Affairs Minister
Shahbaz Bhatti both publicly supported Noreen, with the latter saying, "I will go to every knock for justice on her behalf and I will take all steps for her protection." The imprisonment of Noreen left Christians and other minorities in Pakistan feeling vulnerable, and
liberal Muslims were also unnerved by her sentencing. Minority Affairs Minister
Shahbaz Bhatti said that he was first threatened with death in June 2010 when he was told that he would be beheaded if he attempted to change the blasphemy laws. In response, he told reporters that he was "committed to the principle of justice for the people of Pakistan" and willing to die fighting for Noreen's release. In January 2011, talking about the Asia Bibi blasphemy case, Pakistani politician Salmaan Taseer expressed views opposing the country's blasphemy law and supporting Asia Bibi. He was then killed by one of his bodyguards, Malik Mumtaz Qadri. After the murder, hundreds of clerics voiced support for the crime and urged a general boycott of Taseer's funeral. The Pakistani government declared three days of national mourning and thousands of people attended his funeral. Supporters of Mumtaz Qadri blocked police attempting to bring him to the courts and some showered him with rose petals. In October, Qadri was sentenced to death for murdering Taseer. Some expressed concerns that the assassinations of Taseer and Bhatti may dissuade other Pakistani politicians from speaking out against the blasphemy laws.
Imprisonment of Fatima Naoot In 2014, an Egyptian state prosecutor pressed charges against a former candidate for parliament, writer and poet
Fatima Naoot, of blaspheming Islam when she posted a Facebook message which criticized the slaughter of animals during
Eid al-Adha, a major Islamic festival. Naoot was sentenced on 26 January 2016 to three years in prison for "contempt of religion." The prison sentence was effective immediately.
Murder of Farkhunda Malikzada Farkhunda Malikzada was a 27-year-old
Afghan woman who was publicly beaten and slain by a mob of hundreds of people in
Kabul on 19 March 2015. Farkhunda had previously been arguing with a mullah named Zainuddin, in front of a
mosque where she worked as a religious teacher, a religious shrine in Kabul. During this argument, Zainuddin reportedly falsely accused her of
burning the Quran. Police investigations revealed that she had not burned anything. A number of prominent public officials turned to Facebook immediately after the death to endorse the murder. After it was revealed that she did not burn the Quran, the public reaction in
Afghanistan turned to shock and anger. Her murder led to 49 arrests; three adult men received twenty-year prison sentences, eight other adult males received sixteen year sentences, a minor received a ten-year sentence, and eleven police officers received one-year prison terms for failing to protect Farkhunda. Her murder and the subsequent protests served to draw attention to
women's rights in Afghanistan.
Death sentence for Ahmad Al Shamri's atheism Ahmad Al Shamri from the town of
Hafar al-Batin, Saudi Arabia, was arrested on charges of atheism and blasphemy after allegedly use social media to state that he renounced Islam and the Prophet Mohammed, he was sentenced to death in February 2015.
Death of Mashal Khan Mashal Khan was a Pakistani student at the
Abdul Wali Khan University Mardan who was killed by an angry mob in the premises of the university in April 2017 over allegations of posting blasphemous content online.
Imprisonment of the governor of Jakarta In 2017 in Indonesia,
Basuki Tjahaja Purnama during his tenure as the governor of
Jakarta, made a controversial speech while introducing a government project at
Thousand Islands in which he referenced a verse from the
Quran. His opponents criticized this speech as
blasphemous, and reported him to the police. He was
later convicted of blasphemy against Islam by the North Jakarta District Court and sentenced to two years imprisonment. This decision barred him from serving as the governor of Jakarta, and he was replaced by his deputy, Djarot Saiful Hidayat.
Notable international controversies Protests against depicting Muhammad prohibiting
Nasi', one of the
depictions of Muhammad which raised objections In December 1999, the German news magazine
Der Spiegel printed on the same page pictures of "moral apostles" Muhammad,
Jesus,
Confucius, and
Immanuel Kant. Few weeks later, the magazine received protests, petitions and threats against publishing
depictions of Muhammad. The Turkish TV station
Show TV broadcast the telephone number of an editor who then received daily calls. A picture of Muhammad had been published by the magazine once before in 1998 in a special edition on Islam, without evoking similar protests. In 2008, several Muslims protested against the inclusion of Muhammad's depictions in the
English Wikipedia's
Muhammad article. An
online petition opposed a reproduction of a 17th-century Ottoman copy of a 14th-century
Ilkhanate manuscript image depicting Muhammad as he prohibited
Nasīʾ. Jeremy Henzell-Thomas of
The American Muslim deplored the petition as one of "these mechanical knee-jerk reactions [which] are gifts to those who seek every opportunity to decry Islam and ridicule Muslims and can only exacerbate a situation in which Muslims and the Western media seem to be locked in an ever-descending spiral of ignorance and mutual loathing."
The Muhammad cartoons crisis In September 2005, in the tense aftermath of the assassination of Dutch film director
Theo van Gogh, killed for his views on Islam, Danish news service
Ritzau published an article discussing the difficulty encountered by the writer
Kåre Bluitgen to find an illustrator to work on his children's book ''The Qur'an and the life of the Prophet Muhammad
(Danish: Koranen og profeten Muhammeds liv
). He said that three artists declined his proposal, which was interpreted as evidence of self-censorship out of fear of reprisals, which led to much debate in Denmark. Reviewing the experiment, Danish scholar Peter Hervik wrote that it disproved the idea that selfcensorship was a serious problem in Denmark, because the overwhelming majority of cartoonists had either responded positively or refused for contractual or philosophical reasons. Furthermore, the Danish newspaper Politiken'' stated that they asked Bluitgen to put them in touch with the artists who reportedly declined his proposal, so his claim that none of them dared to work with him could be proved, but that Bluitgen refused, making his initial claim impossible to confirm.
Flemming Rose, an editor at the
Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, invited professional illustrators to depict Muhammad as an experiment to see how much they felt threatened. The newspaper announced that this was an attempt to contribute to the debate about
criticism of Islam and self-censorship. On 30 September 2005, the
Jyllands-Posten published 12 editorial cartoons, most of which depicted the Prophet Muhammad. One cartoon by
Kurt Westergaard depicted Muhammad with a bomb in his turban, which resulted in the
Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy (or Muhammad cartoons crisis) (Danish:
Muhammedkrisen) i.e. complains by Muslim groups in
Denmark, the withdrawal of the ambassadors of Libya, Saudi Arabia and Syria from Denmark, protests around the world
including violent demonstrations and riots in some
Muslim countries as well as consumer boycotts of Danish products.
Carsten Juste, editor-in-chief at the
Jyllands-Posten, claimed the international furor over the cartoons amounted to a victory for opponents of free expression. "Those who have won are dictatorships in the Middle East, in Saudi Arabia, where they cut criminals' hands and give women no rights," Juste told The Associated Press. "The dark dictatorships have won." Commenting the cartoon that initiated the diplomatic crisis, American scholar
John Woods expressed worries about Westergaard-like association of the Prophet with terrorism, that was beyond satire and offensive to a vast majority of Muslims. Hervik also deplored that the newspaper's "desire to provoke and insult Danish Muslims exceeded the wish to test the self-censorship of Danish cartoonists." In France, satirical magazine
Charlie Hebdo republished the
Jyllands-Posten cartoons of Muhammad. It was taken to court by Islamic organisations under
French hate speech laws; it was ultimately acquitted of charges that it incited hatred. In July 2007, art galleries in Sweden declined to show drawings of artist
Lars Vilks depicting Muhammad as a
roundabout dog. While Swedish newspapers had published them already, the drawings gained international attention after the newspaper
Nerikes Allehanda published one of them on 18 August to illustrate an editorial on the "right to ridicule a religion". This particular publication led to official condemnations from Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Egypt and Jordan, and by the intergovernmental Organisation of the Islamic Conference. , an event in support of artists threatened with violence for drawing
representations of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad|1x1px In 2006, the American comedy program
South Park, which had previously depicted Muhammad as a superhero ("
Super Best Friends)" and has depicted Muhammad in the opening sequence since then, attempted to satirize the Danish newspaper incident. They intended to show Muhammad handing a salmon helmet to
Family Guy character
Peter Griffin ("
Cartoon Wars Part II"). However,
Comedy Central who airs the series rejected the scene and its creators reacted by satirizing
double standard for broadcast acceptability. In April 2010, animators
Trey Parker and
Matt Stone planned to make episodes satirizing controversies over previous episodes, including Comedy Central's refusal to show images of Muhammad following the 2005 Danish controversy. After they faced Internet death threats, Comedy Central modified their version of the episode, obscuring all images and bleeping all references to Muhammad. In reaction, cartoonist Molly Norris created the
Everybody Draw Mohammed Day, claiming that if many people draw pictures of Muhammad, threats to murder them all would become unrealistic. On 2 November 2011,
Charlie Hebdo was firebombed right before its 3 November issue was due; the issue was called
Charia Hebdo and satirically featured
Muhammad as guesteditor. The editor,
Stéphane Charbonnier, known as Charb, and two co-workers at
Charlie Hebdo subsequently received police protection. In September 2012, the newspaper published a series of satirical cartoons of Muhammad, some of which feature nude caricatures of him. In January 2013,
Charlie Hebdo announced that they would make a
comic book on the life of Muhammad. In March 2013, Al-Qaeda's branch in Yemen, commonly known as
Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), released a hit list in an edition of their English-language magazine
Inspire. The list included Kurt Westergaard, Lars Vilks, Carsten Juste, Flemming Rose, Charb and Molly Norris, and others whom AQAP accused of insulting Islam. On
7 January 2015, two masked gunmen opened fire on
Charlie Hebdo staff and police officers as vengeance for its continued caricatures of Muhammad, killing 12 people, including Charb, and wounding 11others.
Jyllands-Posten did not re-print the
Charlie Hebdo cartoons in the wake of the attack, with the new editor-in-chief citing security concerns.
Kamlesh Tiwari case In October 2019,
Kamlesh Tiwari, an Indian politician, was killed in a planned attack in
Lucknow,
Uttar Pradesh, for his views on
Muhammad. On 2 December 2015,
Azam Khan, a politician of the
Samajwadi Party, stated that
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh members are homosexuals and that is why they do not get married. The next day, Kamlesh Tiwari retaliated to Azam Khan's statement and called Muhammad as the first homosexual in the world. with some demanding that he be "beheaded" for "insulting" Muhammad. He was detained under National Security Act by the
Samajwadi Party–led state government in
Uttar Pradesh. Tiwari spent several months in jail for his comment. He was charged under Indian Penal Code sections 153-A (promoting enmity between groups on the grounds of religion and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony) and 295-A (deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs). Protest rallies against his statement were held by several Islamic groups in other parts of India, most of them demanding the death penalty. The protests demanding capital punishment for Tiwari triggered counter-protests by Hindu groups who accused Muslim groups of demanding enforcement of
Islamic law of blasphemy in India. On 18 October 2019, Tiwari was murdered by two Muslim assailants, Farid-ud-din Shaikh and Ashfak Shaikh, in his office-cum-residence at Lucknow. The assailants came dressed in saffron
kurtas to give him a sweets box with an address of a sweet shop in
Surat city in
Gujarat. According to police officials, the assailants kept a revolver and knife inside the sweets box. During the attack, one assailant slit his throat while another fired at him. The post-mortem report revealed that he was stabbed 15 times on the upper part of body from jaws to chest, two deep cut marks on the neck points to attempt to slit his throat and shot once.
Innocence of Muslims Innocence of Muslims is an
anti-Islamic short film that was written and produced by
Nakoula Basseley Nakoula. Two versions of the 14minute video were uploaded to
YouTube in July 2012, under the titles
The Real Life of Muhammad and
Muhammad Movie Trailer. Videos
dubbed in
Arabic were uploaded during early September 2012. Anti-Islamic content had been added in
post-production by dubbing, without the actors' knowledge. What was perceived as denigrating of the Islamic Prophet
Muhammad resulted in
demonstrations and violent protests against the video to break out on 11 September in Egypt and spread to other Arab and Muslim nations and to some western countries. The protests have led to hundreds of injuries and over 50 deaths.
Fatwas calling for the harm of the video's participants have been issued and Pakistani government minister
Bashir Ahmad Bilour offered a bounty for the killing of Nakoula, the producer. The film has sparked debates about
freedom of speech and
Internet censorship.
Blasphemy in Sweden during Turkish-Sweden tensions The incident happened amid rising diplomatic tension between the two countries and Turkey's objections to Sweden joining NATO. Turkey had earlier canceled a visit by Sweden's defense minister and is seeking political concessions, including the deportation of critics and Kurds. The act was described by Sweden's Foreign Minister as "appalling" and does not imply government support for the opinion expressed. == Examples ==