It’s time we all stood up for the right to ridicule Islam

The killing of the ‘blasphemer’ Salwan Momika is an intolerable assault on liberty.

That a man appears to have been put to death for expressing his dislike of a religion is exceptionally serious. It is an outrage against liberty, against Enlightenment itself. It matters not one iota whether you approve or disapprove of setting fire to books. It is immaterial whether you consider it fine or crass to put a match to a holy text. All that matters here is that a man was slain, it seems, for giving voice to his irreligious beliefs. For exercising that hard-won and essential liberty to demur from ‘holy’ orthodoxy. If Mr Momika was indeed executed for his ‘profanities’, it is as repulsive, as shaming to humanity’s moral conscience, as when ‘deniers’ of Christ were strapped to the stake in the Inquisition.

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