Yasir Qadhi is an imam in Memphis, Tennessee. He is also Dean of Academic Affairs at the Al-Maghrib Institute. He is a hafiz — that is, he has memorized the entire Qur’an. He has an M.A. in the Islamic Creed and a B.A. in Islamic Sciences from Islamic University of Medina, as well as a master’s and a doctorate in Islamic Studies from Yale. In the video below, he calls Jews and Christians “filthy” (in accord with Qur’an 9:28) and says: “The life and property of a mushrik [one who worships others besides Allah] holds no value in the state of jihad….which means if they don’t say la illaha illa Allah, their lives and property are halal” — that is, permitted to be taken by the Muslims. Now he has taken to Facebook to argue that the Twitter ban on showing images of the beheading of James Foley shows that every society has restrictions on the freedom of speech, and that “the issue of the cartoons [of Muhammad] had nothing to do with ‘freedom of speech’, but rather with each society’s own views on what is acceptable and unacceptable to show.” That is indeed so, but the idea that anyone should be prohibited from showing cartoons of Muhammad is an attempt to force Sharia blasphemy laws on the West, and to create Islam and Muslims as a privileged class that cannot be criticized — which is exactly the situation in the Muslim societies that Qadhi is here comparing to the West. That attempt has been remarkably successful due to the cowardice and pusillanimity of most Western authorities and the mainstream media (very few papers would publish the Muhammad cartoons, even when reporting about them). It constitutes a victory for Sharia and a defeat for the very idea of a free society.
Posted on: Thu, 28 Aug 2014 13:14:03 +0000
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