Daniel Pipes
The mob demanding the execution of Gillian Gibbons — for allowing her seven-year-old pupils to name a teddy bear Mohammed — may have been
government-prompted. In any case, it represents the latest example of one type of Islamist aggression. Most Muslim-majority countries have rules against insulting the Islamic prophet — most notoriously, clauses 295 and 298 of the
Pakistani penal code. Islamists capriciously use such laws as a weapon to hound free-thinking Muslims and non-Muslims.
In 2002, for example, 105 persons were killed in riots in Kaduna, Nigeria, following the publication of an article suggesting Mohammed would have approved of
a beauty contest. At this very moment, mobs are howling in India for the death of
Taslima Nasreen, the Bangladeshi author critical of Islam.
Statements coming out of the West, from the Salman Rushdie affair in 1989, to the Danish cartoons, to Pope Benedict’s speech in 2006, have inspired multiple violent eruptions.
These incidents point to two of the deepest problems in modernizing Islam. One is permitting
freedom of speech concerning Mohammed, the Koran, and other aspects of the religion. The other concerns the right of Muslims to
leave Islam. These twin transitions must be accomplished for Islam to leave its current backward and oppressive condition.
— Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum.Father James V. Schall When Cassius Clay became a Muslim, he called himself “Mohammed.” I have a young student in class whose last name is “Mohammed.” Normally, young girls endow their dolls with names of affection. Evidently, in Muslim theology, to say Jesus Christ is also a man is blasphemy, as is the truth that a Trinity of persons is found within the Godhead’s oneness. To threaten a girl with death for calling a teddy bear “Mohammed” not only insults Mohammed himself but also insults creatures like bears together with all human relationships to God and to the things that He created to be good. No incident could be more helpful in understanding the way such murderous minds work. The disorders in the streets, and threats of death, arise from confusions in minds about the order of rank in God’s creation, and the way we name things that exist. The real blasphemy does not consist in affectionately calling a doll-like teddy bear “Mohammed.” The real blasphemy consists of demanding that the rest of the world, in the noble name of Mohammed, live by such untenable confusions evidently prevalent in the Sudan.
— James V. Schall, S. J. is a professor of government at Georgetown University and author of The Regensburg Lecture, among other books.
Robert SpencerThis incident is another attempt to strong-arm the West into shying away from, and even prohibiting, any critical examination of Islam, precisely at a moment when jihad terrorists use Islamic texts and teachings to justify violence. If you can’t name a teddy bear Mohammad without calls for blood, you certainly can’t call for a critical reevaluation of the Islamic texts and doctrines that jihadists use to justify violence and make recruits among peaceful Muslims.
The OIC and other Islamic entities began calling for blasphemy laws after the cartoon riots of 2006. But the prohibition of blasphemy, whether it takes the form of teddy bears, cartoons, or books about Islam and Mohammad, has no place in a free society. Freedom of speech must encompass the freedom to annoy, to ridicule, and to offend, or it is hollow. The instant any person or ideology is placed off-limits for critical examination and even ridicule, freedom of speech has been replaced by an ideological straitjacket.
Will the West acquiesce in the Islamic world’s efforts to place Islam beyond criticism, when it needs to be reexamined and reformed more than ever? Or will we stand up and defend ourselves and our societal principles of free speech and free inquiry? The teddy-bear incident, as ridiculous as it is, only underscores the urgency of these questions.
— Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and the author of The Truth About Muhammad. < Back 1 2 3 4 
