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It’s obvious to honest observers that the recent attempt of the Organization of the Islamic Conference to push for international “anti-blasphemy” laws at the United Nations is merely an attempt to criminalize the kind of speech that occurs here at Jihadwatch, and in the writing of authors such as Robert Spencer, Oriana Fallaci, Bat Ye’or, and other honest critics of Islamic supremacism. Which is, of course, to say “of Islam,” since there is no widely accepted form of Islam that is not supremacist. There’s a very good reason for this: As Communism was an ideological religion, Islam is a religious ideology.

The absolute political sovereignty of Islam, across the entire expanse of the world, over every living human being, is demanded by all the authoritative sources of Islamic faith: the text of the eternal, irreformable, absolutely flawless and uncreated Qur’an; the burden of the sacred Hadiths that give the authoritative life of the last prophet of God; and the lifetime example (as depicted in these two sources) of that prophet who is the “excellent example” of perfect human conduct.  Any variety of Islam that arises which renounces world supremacy, religious intolerance, the persecution of polytheists, the subjugation of Jews and Christians, the jizya, the oppressive marital laws and unequal sexual arrangements of Sharia
would be heretical-as heretical as a variant of Christianity that renounced the divinity of Christ.

Surely I exaggerate. Surely the intolerant political agenda included in the Qur’an is something secondary, which modernized Muslims (affected by the Western societies in which they increasingly dwell) will somehow pressure their religious authorities to shuck off-as American Catholics (Cardinal Spellman, John Courtenay Murray) pressured the papacy at Vatican II to renounce the Church’s long history of advocating Catholic states that claimed the right to restrict the spread of heresy. The Church made that minor compromise with a secondary, non-infallible teaching, with no obvious ill-effects. Likewise, Lutherans have foresworn the toxic anti-Semitism of Martin Luther, and Calvinists have pretty much (with a few exceptions) sworn off the theocratic politics of John Calvin’s Geneva.  Jews, for
their part, have not executed witches or sodomites for some thousands of years-despite injunctions to the contrary in their own scriptures. Surely Islam contains within it the seeds of a Vatican II, the potential for healthy midrash that can yield more generous readings of the authoritative Qur’anic verses that call for death to unbelievers (polytheists) and demand “willing submission” and the jizya for People of the Book. Right?

Well, no. Anybody who thinks so clearly hasn’t studied the Qur’an to learn what it says about itself, or the authoritative Islamic commentaries that reiterate and expand upon that account. The kind of perfection claimed by and for the Qur’an goes far beyond what Christians claim for the New Testament, or Jews for the Hebrew Bible. Indeed, the level of inerrancy attributed to Muhammad’s recitations is far, far higher than the text of a dogmatic decree issued infallibly by a pope. There is simply no other earthly equivalent for the degree of authority claimed by and for the Qur’an-which Muslims believe pre-existed the created universe, co-eternally with God, word for word as man has received it…in Arabic. Christians believe that Jesus is the Logos, the Word of God co-existing with Him from all eternity. This is the closet simulacrum one can find for the Muslim theory of the nature of the Qur’an.

Does that sound… silly to you? If you say so, you are by Muslim standards committing blasphemy, as surely as if Jesus Christ were walking the earth and you spat in His face, or the Ark of the Covenant was (as some Coptic monks claim) still extant in Ethiopia, and you used the Ark as an altar to Ba’al.

What if you decided to be tactful, or ecumenical, and hid your true reaction to the claim that a religious book which devotes whole chapters to dividing up the booty of military expeditions (including sex slaves) was co-eternal with the Creator of the universe. Let’s say you had the good manners simply to tell a Muslim that you disagreed. That is blasphemy too, by today’s Islamic standards-witness the case of Asia Bibi, who is currently on death row for blasphemy in the jails of heavily-subsidized U.S. “ally” in the War on Terror Pakistan, simply for the crime of refusing to renounce her Christian faith, as demanded by Muslim neighbors who (apparently) resented her over a water dispute.

Because, you see, the very existence of other faiths on the earth is itself, for Muslims, a blasphemy-a sin that cries out to heaven for vengeance (to use a Christian expression). The Christian claim of divinity for Christ is “shirk,” or the blasphemous association of other gods with God. Every Catholic Mass, every printing of the (adulterated and falsified) Hebrew Bible or New Testament is an act of
blasphemous propaganda, because it either consists of idolatrous shirk, or implicitly denies the claim of Islam that it
offers the purified, corrected form of the religion of Abraham.  To deny the truthfulness of Islam is, by Islamic standards, the very “defamation” which the OIC seeks to criminalize across the world. To advocate resistance against orthodox Muslims who (rightly, according to their lights) seek to establish an international theocracy, by pointing out the unattractiveness of Sharia, is likewise “defamation.” Imagine
if Britain’s lax libel laws (in which truth is no defense) were established across the world, the chilling effect that would have on journalism of every kind. That is the kind of standard in religious discourse which Muslims seek to impose. They know full well, as non-Muslim critics of the OIC proposal have pointed out, that  the ban on
criticism would not be applied to Muslims. There is no prospect of Pakistani courts citing a U.N. declaration to prevent imams in Kashmir from denouncing the devotees of the Hindu god Ganesh. Indeed, the Qur’an itself is a long, intemperate act of religious defamation aimed at every other faith on the face of the earth. Were the OIC proposal enacted and enforced, the Qur’an itself should be banned. Not likely.

Now, there’s not much likelihood either that such an anti-blasphemy act, even if it were passed, would have much legal effect. Most Western countries still know enough to shove U.N. resolutions where they belong-down the memory hole. But think of how much damage was done to the state of Israel by the hateful and dishonest U.N. resolution equating Zionism (as distinct from every other nationalism) with “racism.” That resolution sat on the U.N.’s books for decades, and offered endless rhetorical fodder to anti-Semites across the world.  This resolution against religious defamation would offer similar aid and comfort to Islamic supremacists, who would cite it to try to suppress websites like this one, and prosecute in international courts writers like…everyone you read here. One might as well simply add the text of the Qur’an into the General Assembly Charter and accept it as international law. That’s what Muslim supremacists really want, in the long run. Pointing that fact out is an act of religious defamation. If this be blasphemy, then let us make the most of it.

Jihad Watch