Diskussionen om, hvorvidt man må kalde en profet for pædofil, er ikke ny
Her en artikel, der blev bragt i The Independent i slutningen af 2004:
Moore’s paedophile ’slur’ angers Muslims
By Nicholas Pyke
Charles Moore, former editor of The Daily Telegraph, provoked a storm of
criticism from British Muslims yesterday for an article in which he
championed the right to call the Prophet Mohamed a paedophile.
Mr Moore, who opposes new legislation banning incitement to religious
hatred, chose the sensitive issue of the Prophet’s marriage to a nine-
year-old to illustrate his case. “It seems to me that people are
perfectly entitled - rude and mistaken as they may be - to say that
Mohamed was a paedophile, but if David Blunkett gets his way, they may
not be able to,” he wrote in his weekly column.
Responding with a mixture of astonishment and fury, Muslims yesterday
described the remarks as inflammatory and deliberately provocative. Iqbal
Sacranie, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, the main
voice of British Islam, said he was astonished that “a journalist and
former editor with such wide experience could stoop so low”.
Muslim groups have been at the forefront of the campaign for laws against
religious hatred proposed by the Home Secretary in the summer. They have
long complained that, while British Jews are protected by the 1976 Race
Relations Act, there has been no similar ban on anti-Islamic prejudice.
….
Mohamed was 53 when he married his child-bride Aisha, then aged nine. Mr
Moore wrote that he thinks it wrong to judge a historical relationship by
contemporary standards, but said the issue of paedophilia remained the
sort of legitimate line of discussion that could in future be outlawed.
Speaking yesterday, he said: “The purpose of the article was two-fold.
One is to oppose the religious hatred law. The other is to try and
explain where some of this is coming from: there are passages within
Islam which regard any form of criticism or mockery as completely beyond
the pale. I respect the fact that Muslims hold the Prophet in such high
regard, but that has to be balanced against the interests of free
speech.”
Charles Moore stiller også spørgsmålet: Is it only Mr Bean who resists
this new religious intolerance?
Was the prophet Mohammed a paedophile? The question is sometimes asked
because one of his wives, Aisha, was a child when he married her. As
Barnaby Rogerson gingerly puts it in his highly sympathetic recent
biography (The Prophet Muhammad, Little, Brown): “…the age disparity was
considerable: she was only nine while Muhammad was 53?. Aisha was taken
from her seesaw on the morning of her marriage to be dressed in her
wedding garment. After sharing a bowl of milk with the prophet, she went
to bed with him.
….
Why is it that so many people resent religion and turn against it? Surely
it is because of its coercive force, its tendency to mistake the worldly
power of its priests and mullahs for justified zeal for the truth. It is
not God who turns people away, but what people do in the name of God. If
a law against religious hatred is passed, even when blessed by St David
Blunkett, the natural consequence will be a rise in the hatred of
religion.
Particularly hatred of Islam. The BNP website describes Islam in the
hands of some of its adherents as “less a religion and more a magnet for
psychopaths and a machine for conquest”. If a law says they can’t say
that, the BNP will, in the minds of many, be proved right.
….
Iqbal Sacranie, of the mainstream Muslim Council of Britain, wants the
new law because any “defamation of the character of the prophet Mohammed
(Peace Be Upon Him)” is a “direct insult and abuse of the Muslim
community”. In effect, he is asking for the law of libel to be extended
beyond the grave, giving religious belief a protection extended to no
other creed or version of history.
--
"How much easier is self-sacrifice than self-realization." Eric Hoffer
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