Freedom of Speech Versus Blasphemy - Islam

Islam

• On August 18, 1925 The Star (a now defunct London evening newspaper) printed a cartoon by David Low in which the Captain of the English Cricket team, Jack Hobbs, was depicted as the towering statue in a 'Gallery of the most important historical celebrities' and the one to whom the others looked up. Among the others was Muhammad. Colin Seymour-Ure and Jim Schoff's book David Low notes "Harmless enough at home, the depiction of Muhammad meant that in India the cartoon 'convulsed many Muslims in speechless rage', as the Calcutta correspondent of the Morning Post put it. Meetings were held and resolutions of protest were passed."

• On March 9, 1977, 12 African-American gunmen identified as Hanafi Muslims seized three buildings in Washington, D.C., seeking to stop the screening of the movie Mohammad, Messenger of God and also to have certain prisoners released to them. Two people were killed, others injured, and others taken hostage for 39 hours. The film does not actually show Mohammad. See 1977 Hanafi Siege.

• In 1989, Indian-born British author Salman Rushdie was sentenced to death for blasphemy by Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini for Rushdie's depiction of Muhammad as a businessman in his novel The Satanic Verses. An Iranian businessman offered a $3 million reward to anyone carrying out the sentence against Rushdie. Other Islamic scholars followed suit, providing similar fatwa (legal pronouncement in Islam made by a mufti). In 1989, Khomeini died, making the fatwa permanent to those who follow his teaching. In 1991, Hitoshi Igarashi, the book's Japanese translator, was murdered at the university where he taught in Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 60 kilometres north of Tokyo. The book's Italian translator was beaten and stabbed in Milan. William Nygaard, the Norwegian publisher was shot in 1993. Thirty-seven people, who had come to listen to a speech by the translator and publisher (of some parts of the book) Aziz Nesin, a well-known satirist, perished when the hotel where they had gathered was torched in Sivas, Turkey.
  The post-Khomeini Iranian government, while maintaining that the fatwa cannot be reversed, promised only in 1998 to dissociate itself from it. Rushdie stayed in hiding under police protection for several years.

• In May 1994, a fatwa on Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasrin came after she was quoted in The Statesman that "…the Koran should be revised thoroughly." This follows attacks and persecution of Nasrin for her 1993 book Lajja (Bangla word for 'shame').

• In 1997 Tatyana Suskin (also spelled Tatiana Soskin) was apprehended in Hebron while attempting to attach to an Arab storefront a drawing she had made depicting Muhammad as a pig reading the Koran. The incident created considerable tension, and she received a two year sentence.

• In 1998 Ghulam Akbar, a Shi'a Muslim, was convicted, in a Rahim Yar Khan court, of uttering derogatory remarks against Muhammad in 1995 and sentenced to death. He was the first to receive such a sentence under Section 295(c) of the Pakistani penal code.

• In August 2000 a Lahore court sentenced Abdul Hasnain Muhammad Yusuf Ali to death and 35 years' imprisonment for "defiling the name of Muhammad" under Section 295(a), 295(c), and 298.

• In 2001, prior to 9/11, American magazine Time printed an illustration of Muhammad along with the Archangel Gabriel waiting for a message from God. The magazine apologized for printing the illustration after widespread protests in Kashmir.

• In June 2002 Iranian academic Hashem Aghajari gave a speech that challenged Muslims to refrain from blindly following their clergy. His speech provoked international outcry, and, in November 2002, he was sentenced to death for "blasphemy against Muhammad."

• In August 2002, Italian police reported that they had disrupted a terrorist plot to destroy a church in Bologna, Italy, which contains a 15th century fresco depicting an image of Muhammad.

• In November 2002 an article in the Nigerian ThisDay newspaper prior to the upcoming Miss World pageant, suggesting Muhammad would have chosen one of the contestants as his bride, sparked riots that eventually claimed over 200 lives.

• In December 2002 Pulitzer Prize winner Doug Marlette published a drawing that showed Muhammad driving a Ryder truck, with a nuclear rocket attached. He received more than 4,500 e-mails from angry Muslims, some with threats of death and mutilation.

• In 2004, Dutch film maker Theo van Gogh and Ayaan Hirsi Ali created the 10-minute film Submission. The film is about violence against women in Islamic societies. It shows four abused women, wearing see-through dresses. Qur'anic verses allegedly unfavourable to women in Arabic are painted on their bodies. After the movie was released, both van Gogh and Hirsi Ali received death threats. Van Gogh was stabbed and shot dead on November 2, 2004, in Amsterdam by Mohammed Bouyeri. A note he left impaled on Van Gogh's chest threatened Western governments, Jews and Hirsi Ali (who went into hiding).

• In February 2005 the Museum of World Culture in Gothenburg, Sweden decided to remove the painting "Scène d’Amour" by Louzla Darabi. The painting was part of a temporary exhibition about HIV/AIDS, and depicted a man and a woman having sexual intercourse. The artist and the curator had received numerous death threats from Muslims enraged over the Koran quotations which were featured in a corner of the painting. Some threats were telling the artist to "learn from the Netherlands", referring to the murder of van Gogh and threats against Hirsi Ali.

• On April 19, 2005 the Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet broke the news that celebrity preacher Runar Søgaard in a causerie had called Muhammad "a confused paedophile," alluding to Muhammed's marriage with Aisha. Søgaard had at the same time also told jokes about Jesus and Buddha. Søgaard received numerous death threats from Muslims and went on national television to apologise for his jokes. His apologies did not help, and Muslim extremists in Sweden contacted imams around the world in order to have a fatwa issued against Søgaard. Among the contacted ones were Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. A fatwah with a death sentence against Søgaard was eventually issued by an African imam.

• In September 2005 the Tate Britain gallery decided not to display a work by John Latham entitled God Is Great #2, made ten years previously, which consisted in part of a Koran, a Bible and a Talmud that had been disassembled. The exhibition was close to the time of the July 7, 2005 London bombings which influenced the Tate's decision.

• In September 2005, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten printed twelve cartoons of Mohammed which, four months later and fueled by interested parties, eventually led to massive unrest in the Muslim world (including more than 100 deaths), burnt embassies and international tension. In London, protestors carried signs reading, "Behead those who Insult Islam".

• In 2006, the American animated television comedy program South Park, which had previously depicted Muhammad as a superhero character in the July 4, 2001 episode "Super Best Friends" and has depicted Muhammad in the opening sequence since that episode, attempted to satirize the Danish newspaper incident. In the episode "Cartoon Wars Part II", they intended to show Muhammad handing a salmon helmet to Peter Griffin, a character in the Fox animated television show Family Guy. However, Comedy Central, the broadcaster of South Park, rejected the scene, citing concerns of violent protests in the Islamic world. The creators of South Park reacted by instead satirizing Comedy Central's double standard for broadcast acceptability by including a segment of the episode "Cartoon Wars Part II" in which a cartoon American president George W. Bush and Jesus defecate on the flag of the United States.

• In February 2006, activist Manfred van H. was convicted in Germany and sentenced to one year of prison on probation for mailing toilet paper stamped with "The holy Qur'an" to mosques and the media.

• In July 2007, Swedish artist Lars Vilks participated in an art exhibition themed "The Dog in Art" by portraying Muhammad as a roundabout dog. He has subsequently received death threats and had to move out from his home (refer to article Lars Vilks Muhammad drawings controversy for more information).

• In September 2007, a Bangladeshi newspaper published a comic that referred to Muhammad. Copies of the newspaper were torched and the cartoonist has been arrested.

• In November 2007, Unity High School in Sudan came under attention after a teacher at the school was accused of allowing the class to name a teddy bear Muhammad. The teacher was convicted of insulting Islam and was subject to death threats. The teacher was pardoned by Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir on 3 December.

• In December 2007, Mariwan Halabjaee, the Iraqi Kurdish author of Sex, Sharia and Women in the History of Islam, who resided in Norway, was convicted in absentia in Iraqi Kurdistan for the crime of blasphemy. A court in Halabja sentenced Halabjaee to prison for writing that the prophet Mohammed had 19 wives, married a 9-year-old when he was 54 years old, and committed murder and rape. Halabjaee remains in Norway. The sentence states that Halabjaee will be arrested upon his return to Iraqi Kurdistan.

• Images depicting Muhammad at the Farewell Pilgrimage which drew controversy when some editors wanted it removed from Wikipedia.]]

• A protest demanding Wikipedia remove images of Muhammed from all articles was started in February 2008. The main image in question is a painting of Muhammed in Mecca. Wikipedia refused to remove the images.

• Fitna, a film by Dutch politician Geert Wilders which claims the Koran incites violence was met with calls to block and censor the film's showing. "The correct Sharia (Islamic law) response is to cut (off) his head and let him follow his predecessor, van Gogh, to hell," a member of Al-Ekhlaas wrote.

• Gregorius Nekschot, a Dutch cartoonist collaborator of Theo van Gogh who was arrested on May 13, 2008. His house was searched by ten policemen and his computer and sketch books were confiscated. He was held in jail for interrogation and was made to remove eight cartoons from his website at the request of the public prosecutor for being discriminatory for Muslims. The Netherlands police in a "project hatecrimes" ready to file complaints about cartoons.

• In 2010, the New York City Metropolitan Museum of Art quietly withdrew all images of Mohammed from display out of fear of some Muslims who say the images are blasphemous. Kishwar Rizvi, an Islamic art expert at Yale University, said "Museums shouldn't shy away from showing this in a historical context".

• In September 2012, riots broke out across the Islamic world in protest for a YouTube video posing as the trailer for Innocence of Muslims film.