The punishment for blasphemy in most of the major religions is death. It is stated in the Old Testament of the Bible, which is the authority for both the Jews and the Christians:
And he that blasphemeth the name of the LORD, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him: [Book of Leviticus 24:16]
Moreover, if we read Manusmriti, the Law book of the Hindus, it says:
“If a man born of a lower class intentionally bothers a priest, the king should punish him physically with various forms of corporal and capital punishment that make men shudder.” [Manusmriti 9:248]
Regarding the punishment for blasphemy in Islam, it is mentioned in the Glorious Qur’an:
“The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger, and strive with might for mischief through the land is: execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land: that is their disgrace in this world, and a heavy punishment is theirs in the Hereafter;” [Surah Al-Maidah 5:33]. In Islam, a person who has committed blasphemy can either be killed or crucified, or his opposite hands and feet can be cut off, or he can be exiled from that land. On the other hand, in other religions there is no other option except capital punishment. Islam at least has four options of punishment for an act of blasphemy.
In spite of all the negative propaganda in a section of the western media, ironically Islam still happens to be the fastest growing religion, not just in the west but also across the world. The more people try to suppress Islam, the more it will prevail. Allah (swt) will make His Deen (Islam) to prevail over all the other ways of life irrespective of people mocking and ridiculing His messengers. As Allah says in the Glorious Quran:
“Mocked were (many) Messengers before thee; but the scoffers were hemmed in by the thing that they mocked.” [Surah Al-An’aam 6:10].
My regards and best wishes.
Thank you dear EgO Boy for your views on this matter.
As for scriptures of various religions, they are not laws for people in those religions in the majority countries of those people eg looking at israel, they do not take their laws from torah, nor majority christian states take their laws from the bible. I can say the very same about hindus so you can see that most people of most religions do not understand their religions as you asume them to.
The same is true about islam and muslims. You can see that muslim ulema of different sects differ as to what is and what is not islam. Not only that but they differ as to what law is according to islam and what is not law according to islam. Hanafi, shafai, malaki, hambali, jafri etc are just an example for that. Besides ibn taimiya, ibn qayyam, muhammad bin abdul wahab, sir seiyed ahmad khan, alama iqbal, ghulam ahmad parwez, muhammad ali jinnah and list keeps going on had their own views about what islam is and what islamic law is. In fact if we look into understanding of religion amongst soofia we again have more differeent opinions.
This is why I requested that you read my earlier posts to see where I am coming from. There is a major difference in what islam is in the quranic context and what muslims make of it by their own various interpretations of it.
There are at least three major points about which we can have a discussion so that I could show you that islam as understood by majority of muslims is not islam that is in the quran.
1)Islam is not a comprehesive code of laws for ever. It is a set of directives within which people can make laws as they see fit for the benefit of the society.
2)Sunnah does not mean living like the prophet in 7th century arabian setting, doing things exactly the same way the prophet did.
3)Rule of abrogation does not apply to the quran.
All beliefs and laws based on wrong notions of islam are unislamic and false.
This is more than sufficient to prove that muslims are wrong in many things and therefore may as well be wrong as regard blasphemy law.
I would like you to consider the main reason, why the prophet was driven out of makkah? Not because he preached monotheism but because he spoke up against injustices and unfairness and corruption in the society of which he was a member.
It were chiefs of makkah who he was speaking up against just like moses spoke up against pharaoh in egypt. Read the story of abraham and same thing is there.
So islam has a social base as its context read surahs revealed in makkah. In short the prophet struggled to create a fair and just society that cared and shared things and lived like a family.
If it is true that islam is based on these principles then such a society has to have an attitudes and approach that is mainly about forgiving and forgetting not tit for tat and revenge.
If this is true then laws of any such society have to be such which address and fulfil peoples' heartfelt needs, concerns and requirements the best they can so that people are happy with them. Any laws that are forced on society from the top cannot work because the soceity will not cooperate with the authority and so they will be useless.
If islam is from god and god is creater of people then both must reflect each other in ground reality othewrwise the claim that islam is from god or he created people is false.
This is why implementation of proper laws is not possible unless society is first educated about this and is ready to take it on. A society which is not ready for all this shows by its clues as to how they are responding to the idea. One can see what laws a society has, for what purpose, how they got them, how they enforced them and what are the consequences or results of the whole process. If the end result is not satisfactory then society is obviously doing some thing wrong in some respect.
It could be that purpose of laws is not good, the source of laws is not good, the law itself is not good, the enforcement is not good etc etc. Unless each and every stage of laws is good the whole thing become a useless exercise, a wate of time and may even lead to destruction of whatever little is already there leaving it without any social foundation to build on.
In pakistan like country where society is divided very badly no law can work and satisfy all concerned. The first step is to try and unite society or atleast see what are common grounds between all the citizens of pakistan because all are equal citizens with equal rights and responsibilities. Then give people,only those laws that help them upto that stage and then continue trying to educate people to create more and more concensus as much as possible and continue bringing in more and more laws that are according to need of people and the situation. This is necessary for building a good soceity.
If we force things on very differing sections of society on basis of favouratism unfairly and unjustly then they will only and only create more and more divisions and troubles through suspicions, mistrust and distrust. Conspiracies will become common place between groups to further their own interests at expense of others and things will get out of control and the country will be destroyed. Just like a family whose members are not happy with each other because some try to do what others do not like.
LINK TO MY EARLIER POSTS
YouTube - IIPC (2004) 01/04 Islam / Peace / Muslim / Submitter What Quran says speaker Mohammad Shaikh
I shall say more once I have your thoughts on my explanation of things so far.
Thank you again for your participating and giving me opportunity to learn because ideas breed ideas.
regards and all the best.
