You can't call cartoons "blasphemy" and then disavow responsibility for murders that result

Over the past week, Muslim countries have been vocal in condemning France and specifically its president Emmanuel Macron for defending cartoons that lampoon Mohammed.

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation said that  "it will always condemn practices of blasphemy and of insulting Prophets."

Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan condemned "blasphemous cartoons targeting Islam & our Prophet PBUH."

Leaders of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, Iran, Chechnya and other Muslim countries also condemned Macron's defense of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons.

Most of them added that, of course, they also condemned the beheading of teacher Samuel Paty for showing those cartoons. 

There's a problem there, though. If you call the cartoons "blasphemous" then you are directly encouraging murdering the blasphemers, because most Islamic scholars through the centuries say that the punishment for blasphemy is death. Various hadiths imply that one who kills someone for insulting Mohammed - a lesser crime than blasphemy - is not punished, and that certainly applies to those who kill blasphemers.

In Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Pakistan, the punishment today for blasphemy is death.

Now, a man who repeatedly said "Allahu Akbar" has been arrested for killing three people in a church in Nice, France, with reports of at least on of the victims being beheaded.

There was one other attack on police in France by another man screaming Allahu Akbar, as well as a security guard stabbed outside French embassy in Saudi Arabia.

These attacks and murders are a result of the direct incitement by Muslim leaders who are calling the cartoons blasphemous. Moreover, many of these national leaders - instead of trying to calm down Muslims who might be inspired to attack - instead blamed Westerners pre-emptively, by "warning" them that any terrorism that results is their fault.

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said this explicitly to Macron: "You are forcing people into terrorism, pushing people towards it, not leaving them any choice, creating the conditions for the growth of extremism in young people's heads." Kadyrov wrote on Instagram.

Muslim national leaders are responsible for the murders and other attacks today. Their pro-forma condemnations of Paty's beheading were insincere but their anger at the "blasphemy" was not. They are inciting terrorism and blaming the victims by pretending that Muslims cannot be held responsible for their actions. 

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