Lighten Up fellow Muslims

When Muslims put the prophet on a pedestal, we engage in our own idolatry.

At the World Economic Forum last month, I observed something revealing. In a session about the US religious right, a cartoonist satirised one of America's most influential Christian ministers, Pat Robertson. In the audience, chuckling with the rest of us, was a prominent British Muslim. But his smile disappeared the moment we were shown a cartoon that made fun of Muslim clerics.

Since then, a fierce fight has erupted over caricatures of the prophet Muhammad published by the Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten. One showed Islam's messenger wearing, among other things, a turban-turned-time bomb. Although the paper has apologised, the controversy has metastasised. A Norwegian magazine and French paper recently reprinted the drawings, as have other broadcasters and publications while covering this story.

In response, Muslim rioters torched Scandinavian missions in Syria, Lebanon and Iran. Bomb threats have hit the offices of more than one European newspaper. Various Arab countries have recalled their ambassadors from Copenhagen. Boycotts of Danish products are sweeping across supermarkets in the Arab world, and Muslims as far away as India and Indonesia are pouring into the streets to burn Danish flags - which feature the cross, among the holiest of Christian symbols. Last week, thousands of Palestinians shouted "Death to Denmark!" Copenhagen has evacuated Danish citizens from the Gaza Strip and has sternly warned nationals in the West Bank to get out as well. Muslims themselves are getting pummelled in the riots: four died in Afghanistan on Monday alone.

Arab elites love such controversies, for they provide convenient opportunities to channel anger away from local injustices. No wonder President Emile Lahoud of Lebanon insisted that his country "cannot accept any insult to any religion". That's rich. Since the late 1970s, the Lebanese Government has licensed Hezbollah-run satellite television station al-Manar, among the most viciously anti-Semitic broadcasters on earth.

Similarly, the Justice Minister of the United Arab Emirates has said that the Danish cartoons represent "cultural terrorism, not freedom of expression". This from a country that promotes its capital as the "Las Vegas of the Gulf", yet blocks my website - muslim-refusenik.com - for being "inconsistent with the moral values" of the UAE. Presumably, my site should be an online casino.

Muslims have little integrity demanding respect for our faith if we don't show it for others. When have we demonstrated against Saudi Arabia's policy to prevent Christians and Jews from stepping on the soil of Mecca? They may come for rare business trips, but nothing more. As long as Rome welcomes non-Christians and Jerusalem embraces non-Jews, we Muslims have more to protest against than cartoons.

None of this is to dismiss the need to take my religion seriously. Hell, Muslims even take seriously the need to be serious: Islam has a teaching against "excessive laughter". I'm not joking. But does this mean that we should cry "blasphemy" over less-than-flattering depictions of the prophet Muhammad? God, no.

For one thing, the Koran itself points out that there will always be non-believers, and that it's for Allah, not Muslims, to deal with them. More than that, the Koran says there is "no compulsion in religion". Which suggests that nobody should be forced to treat Islamic norms as sacred.

Fine, many Muslims will retort, but we're talking about the prophet Muhammad - Allah's final and therefore perfect messenger. However, Islamic tradition holds that the prophet was a human being who made mistakes. It's precisely because he wasn't perfect that we know about the so-called Satanic Verses; a collection of passages that the prophet reportedly included in the Koran. Only later did he realise that those verses glorified heathen idols rather than God. According to Islamic legend, he retracted the idolatrous passages, blaming them on a trick played by Satan.

When Muslims put the prophet on a pedestal, we're engaging in idolatry of our own. The point of monotheism is to worship one God, not one of God's emissaries. Which is why humility requires people of faith to mock themselves - and each other - every once in a while.

Irshad Manji is a visiting fellow at Yale University and author of The Trouble with Islam. This comment first appeared in The Wall Street Journal.