In Nigeria, 46 churches have been burnt and ten people killed following riots triggered by the cartoons of Charlie Hebdo.
On 9 January when French security forces cornered and killed the Parisian Islamists, Bishop Michael Nazir Ali drew an equivalence between the ‘Charlie’ terrorists and governments which executed people for blasphemy: ‘Many Muslim countries are doing judicially what those in Paris are doing extra-judicially. The Organization of Islamic Countries have campaigned for many years to bring in an internationally recognised crime of the defamation of religion. This is not therefore just about radical Islam. It is about the tendency among Muslims to suppress criticism rather than answer it.’
Mainstream Islamic view
Rod Liddle noted in the Sunday Times 11 January: ‘It is only in Islamic states that people risk being put to death for blasphemy… . It is not just Muslim “extremists” who wish to punish people for apostasy and blasphemy; it is the view of the mainstream Islamic world. The difference is only between whether the transgressors should be killed or merely imprisoned. …The problem cannot be assuaged by… making… arguments that insist – against all the evidence – that all religions are alike. They are not.’
