Issue link: https://newsleader.uberflip.com/i/86226
Sarasota News Leader October 5, 2012 OPINION Why is it that one artist who "blasphemes" Christianity gets a spectacular payday while another who "blasphemes" Islam is issued a very credible death threat? In his seminal treatise "The Government of the Islamic Jurist (velayat-e faqih)," Ayatol- lah Khomeini makes the following points: (1) All laws of Islam were revealed by God to the Prophet Muhammad, God's Messenger; (2) the Prophet Muhammad named a successor only in order to see those laws enforced, not to create any new one; (3) Islamic law is the only form of legitimate government; and (4) because it is, blasphemy requires harsh and immediate punishment. Khomeini explained that "these penal provi- sions are intended to prevent great nations from being destroyed by corruption." Thus, imposing the sentence of death on Rush- die-the-Blasphemer was necessary and un- avoidable in order to save Islam and protect its community of believers from the corrup- tion that inevitably would have infected and ruined both. The early and medieval Christian Church was no less harsh in eradicating heresy and here- tics. During the 12th and 13th centuries, while crusading against Muslim "infidels" in the Holy Land, the Church also was engaged politically and militarily in southern France against the Cathars, or Albigensians, a heterodox sect in- fluenced by Manichaeism. It is reported that at the capture in 1209 of Béziers, an Albigensian stronghold, Arnaud Amalric, bishop of Cîteaux and co-papal leg- ate, ordered that all surviving inhabitants of Béziers, whether Catholic or Cathar, be killed. "Kill all," he said. "God will know His own." In his letter to Innocent III, the bishop claimed that the ensuing carnage claimed nearly 20,000 lives. Afterwards the city was burned to the ground. Over the following centuries, Christendom experienced other, moderating influences. These included those of the Renaissance, Reformation, Counter-Reformation, Enlight- enment, Romanticism, etc. Collectively, these experiences profoundly altered the relation- ship between church and state. As a result, church and state developed as independent institutions, increasingly disengaged from one another. The Islamic world during this same period proved relatively immune to reforming influ- ences. The relationship between ruler and ruled was little changed until the mid-20th century when revolutions in Egypt, Iraq, Syr- ia and Libya ushered in new dictatorships un- der the guise of "Arab Socialism." Iran's 1979 revolution, however, restored Islamic law to prominence. In the wake of the "Arab Spring," Egypt, Iraq and Syria may soon follow suit. Does the shari'a (Islamic law) have a future when not coercively imposed? It does indeed. The Washington Post wrote on April 21, 2011 that despite the infusion of $429 million spent in 2010 by the U.S. Agency for International Development on justice projects in Afghani- stan, 95% of all disputes are still arbitrated by Page 64