Abstract
Contemporary Islam presents Europe in particular with a political and moral challenge: Moderate-progressive Muslims and radical fundamentalist Muslims present differing visions of the relation of politics and religion and, consequently, differing interpretations of freedom of expression. There is evident public concern about Western “political correctness,” when law or policy accommodates censorship of speech allegedly violating religious sensibilities. Referring to the thought of philosopher Baruch Spinoza, and accounting for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights, and various empirical studies on the religious convictions of Muslims, it is argued here that: (1) sovereign European state powers should be especially cautious of legal censorship of speech allegedly violating Muslim religious sensibilities; and (2) instead of legal moves to censorship, European states should defer to the principle of separation of religion and state (political authority). Further, a reasonable interpretation of Islamic jurisprudence allows that matters of religious difference may be engaged and resolved by appeal to private conscience and ethical judgment, rather than by appeal to public law per se.1 In so far as they are representative of contemporary scholarship, the interpretative positions of Ziad Elmarsafy, Jacques Derrida, and Nasr Abū Zayd are presented in illustration of this latter point.
Highlights
Introduction andBackground“Daesh,” the Islamic State of Syria and the Levant (ISIL, known ISIS) has been defeated on the battlefields of Syria and Iraq
Referring to the thought of philosopher Baruch Spinoza, and accounting for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights, and various empirical studies on the religious convictions of Muslims, it is argued here that: (1) sovereign European state powers should be especially cautious of legal censorship of speech allegedly violating Muslim religious sensibilities; and (2) instead of legal moves to censorship, European states should defer to the principle of separation of religion and state
Abū Zayd is “the voice of an exile”[70] from his homeland, charged as he was in 1993 as an apostate
Summary
“Daesh,” the Islamic State of Syria and the Levant (ISIL, known ISIS) has been defeated on the battlefields of Syria and Iraq. The waves of refugees crossing the Mediterranean into the continent out of North Africa and Turkey entail a European encounter with “Islam” that the continent has not seen since the removal of the Moors and the last political incursion of the Ottoman Empire In this empirical sense of contraposition, but in a philosophical sense as expressed, e.g., by French philosopher Jacques Derrida,[4] Europe is unsure of its identity and its destiny. Europe’s identity and its destiny are understood historically, to have been formed in the modern era according to the “humanist” and “secular” ideals of the Renaissance (normally dated 14th-17th centuries) and the principles of “liberal” political philosophy championed in the Enlightenment (18th century). There is recent attention to, and explicitly novel identification of, the so-called “radical Enlightenment,” as articulated convincingly by Jonathan Israel.[5]
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