Daniel Pipes: The Rushdie Rules Reach Florida
[Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.]
Pastor Terry Jones’s plan to burn copies of the Koran at his church in Gainesville, Fla., let it be emphasized, is a distasteful act that fits an ugly tradition. That said, two other points need be noted. First, buying books and then burning them is an entirely legal act in the United States. Second, David Petraeus, Robert Gates, Eric Holder, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama pressured Jones to cancel only because they feared Muslim violence against Americans if he proceeded. Indeed, despite Jones’s calling off the Koran-burning, five Afghans and three Kashmiris died in protests against his plans.
That violence stems from Islamic law, sharia, which insists that Islam and the Koran in particular enjoy a privileged status. Islam ferociously punishes anyone, Muslim or non-Muslim, who trespasses against Islam’s sanctity. Codes in Muslim-majority states generally reflect this privilege; for example, Pakistan’s blasphemy law, called 295-C, punishes derogatory remarks about Muhammad with execution.
No less important, sharia denigrates the sanctities of other religions, a tradition manifested in recent years by the destruction of the Buddhist Bamiyan statues and the desecration of the Jewish Tomb of Joseph and the Christian Church of the Nativity. A 2003 decree ruled the Bible suitable for use by Muslims when cleaning after defecation. Iranian authorities reportedly burned hundreds of Bibles in May. This imbalance, whereby Islam enjoys immunity and other religions are disparaged, has long prevailed in Muslim-majority countries.
Then, in 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini abruptly extended this double standard to the West when he decreed that British novelist Salman Rushdie be executed on account of the blasphemies in his book The Satanic Verses. With this, Khomeini established the Rushdie Rules, which still remain in place...
Read entire article at National Review
Pastor Terry Jones’s plan to burn copies of the Koran at his church in Gainesville, Fla., let it be emphasized, is a distasteful act that fits an ugly tradition. That said, two other points need be noted. First, buying books and then burning them is an entirely legal act in the United States. Second, David Petraeus, Robert Gates, Eric Holder, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama pressured Jones to cancel only because they feared Muslim violence against Americans if he proceeded. Indeed, despite Jones’s calling off the Koran-burning, five Afghans and three Kashmiris died in protests against his plans.
That violence stems from Islamic law, sharia, which insists that Islam and the Koran in particular enjoy a privileged status. Islam ferociously punishes anyone, Muslim or non-Muslim, who trespasses against Islam’s sanctity. Codes in Muslim-majority states generally reflect this privilege; for example, Pakistan’s blasphemy law, called 295-C, punishes derogatory remarks about Muhammad with execution.
No less important, sharia denigrates the sanctities of other religions, a tradition manifested in recent years by the destruction of the Buddhist Bamiyan statues and the desecration of the Jewish Tomb of Joseph and the Christian Church of the Nativity. A 2003 decree ruled the Bible suitable for use by Muslims when cleaning after defecation. Iranian authorities reportedly burned hundreds of Bibles in May. This imbalance, whereby Islam enjoys immunity and other religions are disparaged, has long prevailed in Muslim-majority countries.
Then, in 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini abruptly extended this double standard to the West when he decreed that British novelist Salman Rushdie be executed on account of the blasphemies in his book The Satanic Verses. With this, Khomeini established the Rushdie Rules, which still remain in place...