Tens of thousands of people rallied in different towns and cities of Pakistan on Friday as the seething anger fuelled by the publication of blasphemous cartoons by French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo swept across the Muslim world. Earlier, in Kabul too, thousands of people, including religious scholars, protested against the publication of blasphemous cartoons, demanding punishment to the perpetrators. The protesters, who assembled in front of Zarnigar Park, were chanting “Death to the enemies of Islam, death to France,” and “Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) is our leader”. Similar protests have erupted in other parts of the country as well. The storm of protest disseminated from Asia to Africa and Middle East, resulted in several causalities and many religious sites were torched.
Many writers equated the incident with clash of civilizations coming true, provided the western civilization directly confronted the Islamic. The hatemonger in both civilizations asserted diverting the issue to their interests. The western rightist and neo-nationalist tried best to undermine Islamic civilization by arousing hatred against Muslims, shifting all allegations to Muslims. Here, in Islamic world the extremist elements hold the west responsible for every wrong that earned them miseries.
Formerly, following the publication of the caricatures, armed men, most probably Al-Qaida affiliate, attacked the magazine Charlie Hebdo on Jan 8, killing 13 people, including the editor-in-chief and prominent cartoonists. The reason behind the daylight massacre was the publication of highly provocative cartoons published in the recent past, which had deeply offended Muslims. Whatever, the reason be, the carnage never justifies and deemed a legal course to avenge the sacrilegious cartoon. The deed exercised by extremists finds no validation; in fact contradicts Islamic interpretation. Islam stands for peace and tolerance and emphasizes on spread of Islam and Islamic thought through knowledge and wisdom.
The killing of thousands of innocents has not quenched the blood thirst of these self claimed champions of Islam and Al-Qaida, ISIS and Taliban are the groups whose bloody tale of mass massacre has outpatient the humanists across glob. The Muslim world should come to a conclusion to disown and alienate these evil practitioners, manipulating the sacred religion for personal gains, adding than deducing the miseries of Muslim. The six million Muslims living in France and elsewhere in Europe understandably dread a backlash and fear that the sense of Islamophobia already very visible in their country would further deepen.
To look into all such issues, formerly, the conference of Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC) took place in Turkey. The three-day conference mainly entailed the regional developments, terrorism and the Western anti-Prophet press campaigns followed by stance resolution that wrote, “The freedom of expression should not be misused as a means to attack or hurt public sentiment and religious beliefs.” This really is an important aspect of mutual coexistence. The nations of the world must realize that they respect the religious personalities and sentiments of one another and do not violate it for the sack of so-called freedom of expression.
I do assert the publication, indeed, is highly offensive to holy Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) and his companions, held in high respect by around 1.6 billion Muslims, accounting for over 20% of the earth's population. Nevertheless, the huge losses rendered as a result of demonstration, ranging from personnel, economic and infrastructural is incalculable. The violent retaliation displayed across the Muslim countries, reflected the maligned pro-peace image of Muslims and their delayed comprehension, retaliating the conspiracies discreetly.
In the aforementioned case the freedom of speech can’t be questioned, with the hate and reactionary conduct of a religiously bigoted person, was personal and ill-intentioned, meant to create chaos and anguish in Muslim world. The flawed course we chose to retaliate violently escalated our agony instead of lessening.
We ought to believe that every freedom comes with an equal responsibility. Such expression, may be as a reflection of one's beliefs, is presented in a manner that can lead to direct and presumably intentional harm toward an individual or group or may inflame violence, therefore is a crime.
The cartoon, in short, has nothing to do with freedom of expression. It is in poor taste, of poor quality, and a deliberate insult to Islam and Muslims. No doubt about that. It is utterly unacceptable; however, that so much violence should erupt that earn losses for us.
At the same time it is important to understand that today Muslims are responsible for not explaining the true nature of their faith to the world, or marketing its true values. They are to be blamed for letting terrorists like Osama-bin-Laden or Abbu-Bakar Albaghdadi hijack Islam and ruin its name.
As this tale continues to unfold, I pray that we do not demean ourselves in the process by indulging in the same sort of religious offence and revulsion the cartoonist and former film maker indulged in. An evil can’t be justified by a numerous flawed explanations, nor can a virtue be tarnished by thousand lies. Every truth tempts to exist with distinct disparity.
A good word of advice is to think big and avoid the accessories of critical articles, cartoons, or sick movies. Islam and the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) are much greater than these small, really small, tiny, issues. After all, what we can do is, to dispense all our resources on building human resource, we are deficient in. If we are to step ahead along modern world, we have to pursue true wisdom of Islam that may drop us in the avenue of eternal success; else we turn a perishable history. If we resort to violence than serving as an ambassador of peace subsequent to every such incident certainly the losses overshadow our gains.