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By Root 790 0

the publication of his controversial novel The Satanic Verses. But the law only recognized blasphemy against the Church of England, Britain’s dominant, official religion. But in June 2005, the British parliament approved government plans to outlaw incitement to religious hatred. This bill was aimed primarily at preventing racism against Muslims in Britain. Even though the home secretary argued that the bill wasn’t about stopping people from making jokes about religion—which would be a tragedy in the land that gave birth to Monty Python—or stopping people from having robust debates about religion, it is unclear why this bill was necessary. Inciting religious hatred is already against the law. And as the head of a civil rights group in Britain said, “In a democracy there is no right not to be offended.” He added that religion is related to a body of ideas and people have the right to debate and criticize other people’s ideas. Another activist fighting the bill averred, “The freedom to criticize ideas, any ideas—even if they are sincerely held beliefs—is one of the fundamental freedoms of society.” As of this writing, the House of Lords has returned the bill to the House of Commons, saying it is a bad bill.

Muslims in Europe and across the world may be seen as roughly dividing into three groups. Most visible are the terrorists, who resort to violence (and their allies, the fundamentalists, who do not kill or maim, but provide the terrorists with material and nonmaterial or psychological assistance). Second, their polar opposite is group of people (and although tiny, it is growing) who may be characterized by its questioning of the relevance and moral soundness of Muhammad’s example. They may one day provide an intellectual counterweight to the terrorists and their supporters. I, who was born and bred a Muslim, count myself among them. We in this group have embraced the open society as a true alternative to a society based on the laws of Muhammad—a better way to build a framework for human life. We could call this group the reformers.

The terrorists have far more power and resources than the reformers, but both groups vie to influence the thinking of the vast majority of Muslims. The reformers use only nonviolent means, like writing, to draw attention to debates over core values. The terrorists and fundamentalists, however, use force, the threat of force, appeals to pity (“look at what the West is doing to Islam and Muslims”), and ad hominem smears to evoke a knee-jerk community to withdraw into self-defense. In the West, these tactics give rise to moral relativists who defend so-called victims of Islamophobia; meanwhile, the reformists are shunned by their families and communities and live under the constant fear of assassination. In short, the core of the debate is made taboo, and the fundamentalists attain a near-monopoly on the hearts and minds of the third and largest group of Muslims, the undecided.

Who are these “undecided” Muslims? They are the group to which Tony Blair refers when he says, “The vast and overwhelming majority of Muslims here and abroad are decent and law-abiding people.” They live in Edgware Road and Bradford, and in Amsterdam and Saint Denis; they are not fervent observers of every ritual of Islam, but they count themselves as believers. They are immigrants and second-generation youths who have come to the West to enjoy the benefits of the open society, in which they have a vested interest. But they do not question the infallibility of Muhammad and the soundness of his moral example. They know that Muhammad calls for slaughter of infidels; they know that the open society rightly condemns the slaughter of innocents. They are caught in a mental cramp of cognitive dissonance, and it is up to the West to support the reformists in trying to ease them out of that painful contradiction. The established Muslim organizations, which operate on government subsidy, offer no more than a cosmetic approach to eradicating terrorism inspired by the prophet Muhammad—“peace be upon Him,” naturally.

The first victims