Analysis: Killing Their Voices – Murdering Critics of Islam Okayed by Sharia Law

January 15, 2015

4 min read

Last Wednesday’s terrorist attack against the Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris shocked the world. A satirical magazine known for printing images of Muhammad, which is against Sharia law, the magazine has been threatened over the years by various terror and Islamist groups to stop or suffer the consequences.

The attack on the magazine, which left 12 people dead, is an attack by radical Islamists on the West’s ideals of freedom of speech. The terrorists who carried out the Charlie Hebdo attack were in line with a method of thinking that is becoming all the more popular among Muslims around the world.

Proscribed by numerous Islamic states and various Islamist groups, the terrorists believed that Sharia law should be implemented under any circumstances where the honor of the prophet Mohammed is seen to be ‘insulted’.

Over the last few years, numerous regimes and religious entities in Muslim countries have given out the death penalty for any person believed to have publicly critiqued Islam, Mohammed or even the government. Claiming that all such behavior is anti-Islam, these Islamist regimes have started a war on the basic human privilege known as freedom of expression.

Soheil Arabi (Photo: MEMRI/ Hra-news.org)
Soheil Arabi (Photo: MEMRI/ Hra-news.org)

In Arab and Muslim countries, defaming Islam and the Prophet Muhammad is still defined as an offense against Sharia Law and entails heavy punishment. Recent examples of the enforcement of such laws have included the arrest of Saudi intellectual Dr. Turki Al-Hamad and Saudi blogger Hamza Kashgari; the arrest of another Saudi liberal, Raef Badawi, who was sentenced to public flogging; and both Mauritanian blogger Mohamed Cheikh Ould Mkhaitir and Iranian blogger Soheil Arabi, who were sentenced to death.

Mohamed Cheikh Ould Mkhaitir was sentenced to death for writing an article on January 14, 2014, in which he criticized some decisions that the Prophet and his Companions took during their military conquests. He applied and used these examples to implicitly criticize Mauritania for allowing a discriminatory caste system. The result was that on December 24, 2014, a court in Mauritania convicted him of apostasy and sentenced him to being shot to death, even though he publicly disavowed insulting Muhammad.

As for Iranian Soheil Arabi, he was arrested in January 2014 by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps for insulting the Prophet on his Facebook page. He has been incarcerated in Evin prison for about a year. An Iranian court sentenced him to death, but in December 2014 the sentence was suspended, possibly due to pressure by Iranian human rights activists abroad. However, according to various activists, his sentence may be carried out after all. According to those same sources, Arabi has been threatened not to disclose any information about his legal status.

More recently, Saudi authorities began to carry out the punishment for Raef Badawi. As of January 9, the government began dishing out lashes incurred by Badawi, who is a co-founder of the Saudi Liberal Network online forum. His sentence, 1,000 lashes, is to be meted out in weekly installments of 50 lashes every Friday after prayers in front of a Jeddah mosque. In addition, Badawi is to serve 10 years in jail and a fine of 1,000,000 riyals (about $267,000). His crime? “Harming Islam” and committing Internet crimes. Human rights organizations have criticized the sentence. US State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki called Badawi’s sentence “brutal” and urged Saudi authorities to overturn it.

According to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), the various punishments inflicted on these men for speaking their minds is straight out of the Koran. In a recently published report, MEMRI explains:

Rafi Badawi with his children.
Raef Badawi with his children.

“According to the Sharia, defaming the Prophet is an act of blasphemy, the punishment for which is death even if the blasphemer repents. This law is Koranic, for Koran 9:61 says: “Those who hurt Allah’s Messenger will have a painful punishment.” The same Surah also states: “…Say: ‘(Go ahead and) mock! But certainly Allah will bring to light all that you fear. If you ask them (about this), they declare: ‘We were only talking idly and joking.’ Say: ‘Was it at Allah and His verses and His Messenger that you were mocking? Make no excuse; you have disbelieved after you had believed. [Koran 9:64-66].’”

The question that remains is how long will it take for Western countries to realize that they are not dealing with simply a bunch of radicals, but with a culture that not only condones such actions as were seen in France last week, but promotes and encourages them – even commands it.

While it is rare to see such acts of terror in Western countries that are not mandated by Sharia Law, it is sadly commonplace among Muslim countries. What are clearly acts of terror in the West are in reality run of the mill legal battles in Islamic countries. The sickening part of it all is what happens when Islam succeeds at silencing all of its critics, both internal and external.

Even ‘moderate’ countries such as Egypt, whose President came out and decried the status of radical Islam on the international level, have their less liberal and more mainstream religious elements calling for a cessation of all depictions of the prophet, even by western media.

Should the attacks in France then come as a shock? Perhaps. Or maybe it is a wake up call to the West to get them to realize that these Muslim radicals are simply trying to enforce their version of the Sharia Law in Western countries.

Share this article

Donate today to support Israel’s needy

$10

$25

$50

$100

$250

CUSTOM AMOUNT

Subscribe

Prophecy from the Bible is revealing itself as we speak. Israel365 News is the only media outlet reporting on it.

Sign up to our free daily newsletter today to get all the most important stories directly to your inbox. See how the latest updates in Jerusalem and the world are connected to the prophecies we read in the Bible. .