The immediacy of visual imagery and the rise of social media have created an environment in which cartoonists are particularly vulnerable to “censorship, punitive lawsuits, physical assault, imprisonment, disappearance and murder,” according to a reportto be issued on Tuesday by the Committee to Protect Journalists. The report, commissioned after the attack on the French satirical…
There is no question that images ridiculing religion, however offensive they may be to believers, qualify as protected free speech in the United States and most Western democracies. There is also no question that however offensive the images, they do not justify murder, and that it is incumbent on leaders of all religious faiths to…
Radical Islam has become a top security threat in many countries. But why are young people attracted to it? That is a big question facing France, where authorities estimate nearly 1,500 people have left to join jihadist groups in the Middle East. A former Guantanamo Bay detainee may not have all the answers, but is…
Radical preacher Anjem Choudary has claimed that all Muslim MPs and voters are “apostates” as the general election approaches. Writing on Twitter that voting is a “sin” against Islam, he argued that Parliament violated religious law because Allah is “the only legislator”. Mr Choudary wrote: “The only excuse is for a new Muslim or someone…
Islam must reform, but the effort is not an internal Muslim struggle alone, and should include the rest of the world as well, Sheikh Hassan Chalghoumi said in Washington. Chalghoumi, the imam of the Drancy Mosque in France, spoke on Tuesday at the annual MEMRI (Middle East Media Research Institute)-Tom Lantos Archives on Anti-Semitism and…
