Salman Rushdie's name became well known in the Islamic world was not because he was a novelist, but because he was considered to have blasphemed the Prophet Muhammad, the Qur'an, Islam, God, through his novel Satanic Verses. That day, February 14, 1989, Iran's spiritual leader Sayyid Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini called on Muslims around the world to execute him.
Many Muslims took seriously responding to the call, many were hunting Rushdie's head. Rushdie is indeed escaped from the death sentence and in good health up to now, but the translator of his novel in the Japanese edition was killed. Editor for Norwegian edition and a translator for Italian language edition was injured because of being attacked by an unknown person.
The Western world was uproar. They realized the danger of perverse verdicts, lost, or blaspheming Islam of the authoritarian and radical in the Islamic world. Perverse verdict phenomenon, apostasy, insulting Islam, the Western's response to him and the implications for freedom of religion and expression has been harassing the attention of Paul Marshall and Nina Shea, both are researchers at Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom, USA. They surveyed many Muslim countries. They poured the survey results in the book Silenced : How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes are Choking Freedom Worldwide (Oxford University Press, 2011.)
Marshall and Shea found that after the attacks of September 11, 2001, then the verdict of heresy, apostasy, and blasphemy against Islam were becoming widespread. Some of them are expressing it excessively until receiving the verdict as denouncing Islam. They also became the target of anger radicals. That's what happens when newspaper Jylland-Posten, Denmark published the Prophet Muhammad's cartoon in 2005. It also happened in the Dutch politician Geert Wilders who made Fitna in 2008. Rushdie case, Jylland-Posten, and Wilders seemed to confirm that the threat of the death penalty is only directed at those who insult Islam, to non-Muslims and citizens of non Muslims countries. But Marshall and Shea found the threat also affected the Muslims in Muslim countries, such as the reformers of Islam and Muslim minority. Marshall and Shea came to the conclusion that the death penalty due to allegedly to insult Islam has crossed religious barriers and national borders.
America seems to be a Western country that is often used as the target of anger and threats. Most recently, on 12 September 2012, the U.S. ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens and three embassy staff were killed by a rocket attack from groups who protested the "Innocence of Muslims" deemed insulting to the Prophet Muhammad.
Threats to the situation was a death sentence, because they were considered to denounce Islam, and they began to threaten people from all walks of life, ranging from novelists, cartoonists, filmmakers, politicians, those who converted, religious reformers and Muslim minority groups.
Such phenomena can't be tolerated. Besides damaging the relationship between Islam and the West, it also threatens the freedom of expression and religion. Therefore, Marshall and Shea recommend (especially to the West) to refrain from giving a negative stigma on Islam. However, Marshall and Shea do not want the freedom of expression and religion to be buried because of it. They recommend an intensive dialogue between Islam and the West.
Marshall and Shea also did not want the Muslims (who do not agree with the death penalty for those accused of insult to Islam) was only silence. If they remain silent, they are the same as those who died with those who were killed because of charges of insulting Islam. Silence seems to be the key word for Marshall and Shea. They made it as their book's title.
Abdurrahman Wahid -- the President of Indonesia from 1999 to 2001 -- was a man who dared to express his opposition to the death penalty for those accused of insulting Prophet Muhammad, Qur'an, Islam and God. That's why Marshall and Shea put his post as an introduction to their book. Gus Dur wrote God's grace would not fade even heckled, cursed, insulted, and humiliated. God does not need to be defended. God the Most Merciful, the Compassionate has no enemies. Then, why are there the Muslims who feel they have to defend God by attacking and even killing those who are deemed to insult God?
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(CZ-lacalifusa091712)
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