People with the necessary authority need to get this out soon:
The God of our great faith is all-knowing and all-powerful. God’s strength is beyond the imagining of humans and infinitely exceeds their puny forces.
If anyone shall teach the opposite, that God-or God’s holy prophets-can receive the slightest pinprick of injury from words, deeds, or thoughts of men, whether casual or purposeful; satirical, disrespectful, or directly hostile, that person is a false teacher and enemy of God. Let him be anathema, cast out from the company of the faithful, or taught the truth by real believers. The blasphemy that God or his prophets require protection by humanity is a sin against every truth and moral duty; to believe that God seeks such protection in the form of violence and bloodshed is to believe what is even more evil.
JamesWimberley says
The last victim of the Kouachi brothers was a policeman who tried to stop them as they left the Charlie Hebdo offices. His name was Ahmed Merabek, and like them was a French Muslim of Maghrebi origin. His brother Malek has made a moving plea for tolerance; the video is embedded in this Guardian article.
The Malek brothers represent by far the dominant face of French Islam. To the extent that the Kouachis, and the lone copycat gunman Amedy Coulibaly, had a political strategy (and on the face of it, they look low-IQ freelancers, primed but perhaps not controlled by terrorist handlers), this can only be to "heighten the contradictions", widen the divide with French Muslims and non-Muslims, and drive the Muslims into Salafism. It's not going to work, thanks to Muslims like the Merabeks. The exposure of millions of European Muslims to the values of the Enlightenment, of Diderot, Hume and Kant, and before them of William the Silent, Roger Williams and John Milton, will gradually transform and modernize Islam. No wonder the Salafists fear the process.
byomtov11 says
This is very good, Michael.
I have a related opinion that absolute certainty in one's religious beliefs is also blasphemy, because the believer claims to fully understand the divine, which is not possible for humans. Hence religious believers, as a consequence of their faith, are, to my mind, required to be modest in their claims of understanding, and to avoid certainty.