Amongst all voices of anger and emotional distress that can blind our eyes, the voice of reason must rise and declare the truth. The voice of reason this time is not coming from the Middle East moderates or clerics, as it coming from those who are prone to doubt and fear. It is coming the major western country and the leading world power. It is from the United States by one of its most influential political analysts Fareed Zakaria. In the "aftermath" of the increased terrorist attacks and returning of the Islamophobia, Zakaria reminded us with enough and logical evidences that Islam and Koran never incited on violence or even severe punishment. Therefore, Zakaria said in his article in the Washington Post that" Koran prescribes no punishment for blasphemy. Like so many of the most fanatical and violent aspects of Islamic terrorism today, the idea that Islam requires that insults against the prophet Muhammad be met with violence is a creation of politicians and clerics to serve a political agenda." In fact, as Zakaria noted "One holy book is deeply concerned with blasphemy: the Bible. In the Old Testament, blasphemy and blasphemers are condemned and prescribed harsh punishment. The best-known passage on this is Leviticus 24:16 : "Anyone who blasphemes the name of the Lord is to be put to death. The entire assembly must stone them. Whether foreigner or native-born, when they blaspheme the Name they are to be put to death." To explain this furthermore, Zakaria explained that the word blasphemy appears nowhere in the Koran. (Nor, incidentally, does the Koran anywhere forbid creating images of Muhammad, though there are commentaries and traditions — "hadith" — that do, to guard against idol worship.) Islamic scholar Maulana Wahiduddin Khan has pointed out that "there are more than 200 verses in the Koran, which reveal that the contemporaries of the prophets repeatedly perpetrated the same act, which is now called ‘blasphemy or abuse of the Prophet'. . . but nowhere does the Koran prescribe the punishment of lashes, or death, or any other physical punishment." On several occasions, Muhammad treated people who ridiculed him and his teachings with understanding and kindness. "In Islam," Khan says, "blasphemy is a subject of intellectual discussion rather than a subject of physical punishment." Unfortunately, Zakaria found out that what is not stated in Islam is adopted in Muslim countries saying that "blasphemy and apostasy are grievous crimes against Islam and should be punished fiercely. Many Muslim-majority countries have laws against blasphemy and apostasy — and in some places, they are enforced." Zakaria named many countries in this concern such as Pakistan, Bangladesh and including Egypt, Turkey and Sudan who have all used blasphemy laws to jail and harass people and when governments try to curry favor with fanatics, eventually the fanatics take the law into their own hands. Zakaria called the world to fight the source of the problem first. He explained that It's not enough for Muslim leaders to condemn people who kill those they consider as blasphemers if their own governments endorse the idea of punishing blasphemy at the very same time. The U.S. religious freedom commission and the U.N. Human Rights Committee have both declared that blasphemy laws violate universal human rights because they violate freedom of speech and expression. They are correct. Finall he warned that blasphemy is not a purely domestic matter, of concern only to those who worry about countries' internal affairs. It now sits on the bloody crossroad between radical Islamists and Western societies. It cannot be avoided anymore. Western politicians, Muslim leaders and intellectuals everywhere should point out that blasphemy is something that does not exist in the Koran and should not exist in the modern world. http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/fareed-zakaria-blasphemy-and-the-law-of-fanatics/2015/01/08/b0c14e38-9770-11e4-aabd-d0b93ff613d5_story.html?tid=pm_pop
