‘We never seem to learn that appeasement of religious extremists only makes them stronger.’ Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
I do not much like the destruction of books. As a form of protest, it conjures sinister images from the past, most notably the Pathé news reels of brownshirts and students gathered around a pyre in Berlin’s Opernplatz under the watchful eye of Joseph Goebbels. The Nazis had raided libraries, universities and other private collections to harvest works by political dissidents, sexologists, “degenerate” artists and any others deemed to be “un-German”. Books by Left-wing authors such as Karl Marx, Bertolt Brecht and Rosa Luxemburg were publicly incinerated, along with fictional works by the likes of Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka, Victor Hugo, Oscar Wilde and James Joyce. This was philistinism in its purest form.
The symbolism of a burning book is, therefore, the repudiation of the very notion of freedom. And yet this same freedom means that we must be able to burn books if we so desire. The Nazis, of course, were destroying the property of others, an authoritarian act designed to eliminate whole branches of thought. This is not to be conflated with an individual who chooses to vandalise his or her own property. The trans activists who burn J.K. Rowling’s books and post the footage online are making fools of themselves, but they are also exercising their right to do so in a free society.
This is a distinction worth bearing in mind when we consider the murder of anti-Islam campaigner Salwan Momika, an Iraqi man who had been awaiting a verdict in Sweden for the crime of “agitation against an ethnic or national group”. Momika had publicly burned a number of copies of the Quran during the summer of 2023. He was shot dead during or just before a live stream on TikTok at his home in Södertälje on Wednesday. The details are as of yet unclear, but there are suggestions that the assassination may have involved a foreign power.
Momika had been granted temporary residence in Sweden in 2018, although his frustration with his adopted country’s lacklustre commitment to freedom of speech led him to seek asylum in Norway in March 2024. After just a few weeks, the Norwegian authorities had him deported back to Sweden. According to Momika, the prosecutor in his trial had been seeking his extradition back to Iraq because of his criticisms of Islam. Back in August, he had posted the following on X: “Sweden and Norway have identified me as a threat to their security. Yes, I am a threat to the Islamization project of the West, which is being pursued by your Leftist communist government that is deceiving the citizens and making the country Islamic. So I have come to awaken the people and thwart the Islamization project of the West, and I will not be afraid of you.”
In cases of this kind, it has become depressingly inevitable that commentators will seek to blame the victim. After the publication of Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses in 1988, the Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran issued a fatwa calling for the author’s murder. Instead of taking a united stance against a foreign regime threatening the life of a British citizen, pundits and politicians engaged in endless debates about whether Rushdie had brought this on himself. Crime novelist John Le Carré stated that “there is no law in life or nature that says great religions may be insulted with impunity”, and that “there is no absolute standard of free speech in any society”. It should go without saying that powerful theocrats do not require protection from the hurtful words of novelists.
Last month was the 10th anniversary of the massacre at the offices of the French magazine Charlie Hebdo. Initially, world leaders were united in their condemnation of terrorists who had butchered cartoonists for drawing satirical caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed. Thousands gathered at vigils and held placards bearing the words “Je Suis Charlie”. PEN America — an organisation devoted to the principle of free expression — created a “courage award” for Charlie Hebdo. That was until dozens of members of PEN, including writers such as Joyce Carol Oates and Junot Díaz, signed an open letter in protest. Charlie Hebdo, they claimed, had mocked a “section of the French population that is already marginalized, embattled and victimized”. This was, of course, to misidentify the target. The cartoonists weren’t “punching down” at the Muslim minority, but rather “punching up” at the authoritarianism of institutionalised religion.
We never seem to learn that appeasement of religious extremists only makes them stronger. Our collective failure to take a firm stance for artistic liberty in the Rushdie affair has made it more difficult to uphold the principle today. That Momika was on trial in the first place suggests that Sweden’s commitment to freedom of expression has been subordinated to the creed of multiculturalism. According to the BBC, following Momika’s campaigns in 2023 the Swedish government had “pledged to explore legal means of abolishing protests that involve burning texts in certain circumstances”. Yet Momika’s copies of the Quran were his own property, and he was free to dispose of them as he wished. We might take the view that his method of protest is insensitive or provocative, but in a free society such behaviour is a matter of individual conscience.
The victim-blamers have been predictably vocal. Within hours of the news of Momika’s murder, television personality Bushra Shaikh posted the following on X: “Some of you may disagree but the public desecration of any holy book should be viewed as a hate crime and the offender should face consequences”. She later clarified that by “face consequences” she was not supporting murder, but rather the principle that the “government decides on the punishment”. And yet Shaikh’s logic defeats itself. Her post has been widely interpreted as hate-filled and authoritarian. Does this mean that, if the government were to designate the public advocacy of blasphemy laws a “hate crime”, she would be content to be prosecuted?
Those who endorse authoritarianism, in other words, are laying a trap for themselves. If we look to the state to punish our detractors, where does that leave us when the values of those in power no longer align with our own? Momika has been blamed for the riots and the international diplomatic rows that ensued following his campaigns, but the peaceful protester is not responsible for those who break the law in response. Last summer, the Guardian published a piece that presented his Quran-burning as evidence of a “racism crisis”. One of the Swedish Muslim interviewees was quoted as saying: “I understand you are allowed to think and feel what you want, this is a free country, but there must be boundaries. It’s such a pity that it has happened so many times and Sweden doesn’t seem to learn from its mistakes.”
Those of us who still believe in liberal values will baulk at the suggestion — and the implied threat — in claiming that we are mistaken to support freedom of expression. Moreover, there is nothing racist about burning a copy of the Quran. Islam is a belief-system, not a race. The criminalisation of “Islamophobia” makes about as much sense as prosecuting citizens for “Marxistophobia” or “Freemarketcapitalismophobia”. Had Momika burned a copy of The Communist Manifesto, would there be calls to modify the law to see him incarcerated?
Increasingly, Western societies are pandering to religious zealots who are willing to resort to violence to achieve their aims. Members of the ruling class are undeniably afraid. During Prime Minister’s Questions in November 2024, the Labour MP for Birmingham Hall Green and Moseley, Tahir Ali, asked Keir Starmer whether he would establish “measures to prohibit the desecration of all religious texts and the prophets of the Abrahamic religions”. Starmer replied: “I agree that desecration is awful and should be condemned across the House. We are, as I said before, committed to tackling all forms of hatred and division, including Islamophobia in all its forms.” A better response would have been: “Blasphemy laws are incompatible with the values of a free country.”
It is undeniably the case that Islamic theocracies are intolerant to dissent, but we have only ourselves to blame if we capitulate to pressure from foreign powers to undermine our commitment to secularism. Pakistan’s prime minister Imran Khan, for instance, blamed the radicalisation of Islamic terrorists on the French president Emmanuel Macron’s tolerance for the right of citizens to blaspheme against Islam. In October 2020, he tweeted: “President Macron has chosen to deliberately provoke Muslims, incl his own citizens, through encouraging the display of blasphemous cartoons targeting Islam & our Prophet PBUH.” President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey even cited Momika’s Quran-burning in an attempt to scupper Sweden’s bid to join Nato in 2023.
But blasphemy only makes sense to the faithful. Stéphane Charbonnier (known as “Charb”), the cartoonist and editor-in-chief of Charlie Hebdo who was among the victims of the 2015 atrocity, addressed this point in an “open letter” completed just two days before his death. “God is only sacred to those who believe in him,” he wrote. “If you wish to insult or offend God, you have to be sure that he exists… In France, a religion is nothing more than a collection of texts, traditions, and customs that it is perfectly legitimate to criticize. Sticking a clown nose on Marx is no more offensive or scandalous than popping the same schnoz on Muhammad.”=
This is the spirit of secularism — the French tradition of laïcité — that other countries in the western world should emulate. The problem is not the complaints from those who seek the implementation of sharia in democratic nations, but those in power who fail to reject such demands unequivocally. The murder of Salwan Momika should be a wake-up call for the West. Continued appeasement will only guarantee further bloodshed. For all the short-term risks of defending free speech, our long-term security depends upon it.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeBut Woke Western governments are in denial of actual crimes against Christian, Hindu, Buddhist et al faiths.
Only one violent creed is supported by them, and even this site has degenerated into censoring comments which point out how rabid that faith which cannot be named is.
It is interesting, the amount of hand wringing on Palestine, but the Yazidi and Armenian Christians, Jews all over the middle East, Hindus and Sikhs in Pakistan, Parsis in Iran, somehow escape all attention.
And the Palestinian Christians.
Arab Christians.
If you want to understand the nudged culture, look at the NGOs and something like George Soros Open Society Foundations. Follow the money. Who funds or “helps” politician’s campaigns? Who funds writers, and media types that push these things? Who funds the NGO’s and who and what do the NGOs fund? What groups or ideas do they elevate or who do they tell us is bad? This kind of stuff doesn’t get talked about, because there is censorship. European nations are “managed democracies” where you are free to choose, just as long as you don’t choose wrongly. Free to hold an opinion as long as it’s one of the accepted ones.
Would that be an oblique reference to those deluded, semi feral nutters who worship fragments of a meteorite somewhere in the Arabian Desert?
Yes, those to whom the mountain has to reach as their chief won’t deign to go to it!
I prefer books to be destroyed by other ideas, not fire. But, fire is easier.
Astonished to learn that there are still blasphemy laws in Europe. Nonsense we should be long rid of. Along with all the other made up non crime hate incidents.
Indeed. It’s all part of the same mindset – the desire (or need) to control others.
When AD cites secularism as the only true defence against this tendency, he’s on absolutely solid ground. As soon as anyone invokes their “beliefs” as a reason for curtailing the freedoms of others, there lies the road to tyranny.
These battles had been fought, and largely won, in the West at least; religious absolutism was then replaced with woke, and we find ourselves having to fight the same battles all over again.
Believe what you want, but keep it to yourself and mind your own business. Why do so many people find that so difficult? What are they afraid of, exactly?
Surely wearing a burka or a veil is a hate crime
It is certainly an implicit insult to men suggesting that sight of a woman’s face/hair will provoke violent lascivious reaction from the male population. But in most circumstances we are happy to overlook such insult on the basis of freedom to believe however irrational as long as it does not harm others.
The Pakistani grooming rapist gangs suggest that for them at least the insult is warranted.
It is also used as a device to avoid arrest for such crimes as shoplifting, and more serious ones, as I have myself seen in Dubai.
It is worse than that it is a declaration of intent, almost war. It is a unbending unequivocal rejection of our society and our values with the message that if and when the opportunity arises we will enforce this on you
Who is to determine what “does not harm others’, when this idea is itself being used as a reason for censorship?
But you see that in those Middle Eastern countries, the sight of an unveiled woman does excite those very reactions. They have not had the same centuries as those in the west to accustom themselves to the sight of woman. They are separated from them early in life and not allowed to be alone with one until they are married. No wonder they are so frustrated.
In France it can be a crime.
But not in Nelson Lancashire
It’s contemptuous of the society in which they live.
So is murder!
Well it can be because sooner or latter someone will be attacked over immodest dress, as per Iran
Then that shows the essential hubris in the thing – you get rid of religious absolutism and the same tendency you disdained, just migrates somewhere else.
In the Internet era, it’s turbocharged, happens alarmingly fast.
So what exactly have you achieved?
Why do they find it difficult?
Because the concept and practice of private belief and thought is Reformation.
The problem is we have a huge support base in the West for blasphemy laws, and that’s the woke / leftist / college educated / feminist block.
We tend to associate blasphemy laws with traditional religions and with physical violence being used to enforce them.
So it isn’t as apparent, because the woke blasphemy laws are seemingly non-religious (though on closer examination it is a religion), and enforced thorough cancel culture and capture of the media / universities.
And it’s pretty widespread – got blocked on a football site, of all places, for politely opposing the narrative on a Donald Trump thread. Which was full of people with the “correct” viewpoint, and blasphemers were not allowed.
Of course, the basic rule of blasphemy is that you are allowed to insult and mock other beliefs, while “protected” beliefs and groups are sacred and beyond question.
All that Islam has done in the West is to piggyback on the woke treadmill and spread the narrative that they are one of the “protected” categories.
Yes the Woke religion believers support the Islamic believers although anomalously not the Christian believers.
I’m astonished to learn that the Swedish prosecutor wanted to extradite Momika back to Iraq for being ANTI-Islam. As deportation rarely occurs why make an exception for this rather than militant Islam? And as we are supposed to be very concerned about the fate of deportees, what did the prosecutor think would happen to Momika in Iraq?
Indeed truly bizarre.
I am not sure if that true. I wouldn’t be surprised if that really were the case though, and it’s mind boggling. Can’t deport illegal immigrants, rapists and violent criminals, but someone who criticises a religion, sure send him to Iraq and certain death.
Scumbags.
Agreed. Extraordinary.
What’s worse burning a book or murder?
Tough one that
Even Israel still has blasphemy laws.
So what? I would say they are wrong.
In response, perhaps Europe should have a national blasphemy month, when all beliefs and authoritarian positions can be questioned and mocked. The participants can dress up and wear masks, and parade through the streets, partying and poking fun at the devoted and their book-bound views. Time for a Carnival…
Ha! Ha! As a devoted follower of Jesus I totally agree! There’s too much pomposity and priggish complaining from institutionalised religions. My God can take it, but my advice would be to take care not to go too far,; he can also dish it out!
Well, what’s too far?
You spoil your comment at the end. If the only retribution was a lightening strike from on high, well, I suppose that’s fair enough but we don’t want to give any credence to some nutter thinking that they are doing God’s work.
It’s not just those who cry Islamophobe who are the problem. You’d also have to contend with those who cry anti-Semite at even the slightest critique as well.
The inconvenient fact is that the institutionalised persecution of apostates, minority religions, especially Christian (like Mr Momika) etc in many Islamic countries is brushed under the carpet or simply denied by those in the west who wring their hands over perceived Islamophobia in Europe.
I believe that this flagrant gaslighting fuels a great deal of resentment amongst those being painted as “far right”. Is there really an ardent desire to enable the islamification of the west. Was it always a part of the globalist agenda? The cover that is gifted to the most troubling aspects of this religious culture are a source of grave concern for many that can only make them wonder. Whatever the truth one can well understand the dismay and bewilderment of the likes of Momika. No wonder he believed that he was ,”a threat to the Islamization project of the West, which is being pursued by your Leftist communist government that is deceiving the citizens and making the country Islamic.”
After the 2015 Hebdo killings, every newspaper in Europe should have printed a full front page with one of the cartoons.
What Islamization project? That Muslims are treated the same as any other community?
If you’re living in a democratic Western country, Muslims are part of that community, and as such should abide by it’s rules; else, go live somewhere where the rules are different. Book-burning is an insult to no-one, except those who insult themselves by making pathetic objections, thus showing themselves to be weak and unable to bear being criticised.
Thank you Andrew for such a clear and sane essay.
How any one who desires boundaries around free speech cannot see the irony of their position is laughable but also terrifyingly dangerous.
“Books by Left-wing authors such as Karl Marx, Bertolt Brecht and Rosa Luxemburg were publicly incinerated, along with fictional works by the likes of Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka, Victor Hugo, Oscar Wilde and James Joyce.”
Seems perfectly sensible to me
I love the description of marx as a left wing author.
Yes, it’s like calling Albert Einstein a top-notch physicist.
End all this with a Free Speech Act. Defend everyone’s right to express themselves. No buts.
Interesting also that Christian beliefs can be ridiculed, without a violent response from its believers or complaints of those on the left condemning the same when it concerns Islam.
Perhaps it’s proof that Christians are secure and and confident in their beliefs, whereas those who commit violence are not so confident in their religious beliefs?
It is very wrong, evil, that anyone should be shot for burning a book, any book. Or that anyone should be in fear of their life because of something they wrote of published. That is the beginning and end of it.
It’s not the State’s business what I think or say, except in very limited circumstances. That’s the old fire in the crowded theatre thing..
No one has any right at all not to be offended. I was offended by the language some people on the train yesterday. Big Deal. I got home all right.
There’s such a thing as being too sensitive.
Sometimes being a bit offensive makes a point, or makes us think. Some people and ideas deserve ridicule and we all need a bit of gentle ribbing sometimes.
But and here’s a thing, I think it’d be a slightly better world if we didn’t go out of our way to offend others for the sake of it. That’s not big or clever..
That’s all.
“measures to prohibit the desecration of all religious texts and the prophets of the Abrahamic religions”.
Nobody gets very agitated when a bible or any other holy books is burned. Of course, the adherents might be upset but I can’t think of any bible burners being murder over the last few centuries.
Islam is being treated with kid gloves that are not worn for anyone else. I can’t see how this help any but the most aggressive islamists who, at the drop of a hat, will happily bully other Muslims. Afghanistan being a clear warning.
So let’s just say it out loud and be done with: many islamists are incapable of behaving like civilized people. Their default response to any slight – real, perceived, or imaginary – is violence and one would be racist to expect anything else. They are not capable of it. Is that better?
Andrew Doyle is 100% right and his explanation is flawless, or it should be to any person who wishes to live in a safe and free society, in which people can publicise their views and find their philosophical comrades. I fear that this fine essay may be quoted some years hence, in some far flung stronghold where a European diaspora clings to life, as an example of the warnings which went unheeded prior to the great catastrophe.
The liberal West can’t be an apologist for authoritarian agendas. De facto blasphemy compliance has already weakened the fibre of Western culture. While I still grapple with free speech absolutism, I agree with Andrew that Momika’s actions were directed at institutional Islam.
Sign of things to come I fear. So far you only need to go into hiding (Batley looking at you) to escape death. Wait for the next evolutions of this in Europe. Burning alive a la Pakistan if accused of blasphemy? 17th century style blasphemer trials?
The idea of a right to blaspheme gives ground to the belief that there are holy books.
The very concept of secularism is a product of Christianity, as Tom Holland demonstrates in Dominion. Approved beliefs, whether in the Third Reich, Constantine’s Rome, or as political correctness/woke, bear the impress of Christianity. Originally, religion was just burning incense on an altar.
That there is private belief and thought – and speech – is Reformation. Getting rid of superstition is Reformation.
The Western mind, formed by Christianity, seeks to accommodate others in its own definition; something demonstrated in France. It’s unlikely Erdogan or Imran Khan could understand Dominion – the ‘bible’ of the Western mind – even if they read it.
Tehran thinks it can pursue international lawlessness when and wherever it likes, issuing hefty awards for the assassination of infidels if not fatwas.
But Bibi is not going anywhere, and the levers are in place in Israeli politics to lead the Trump administration towards a coalition directed at Iranian regime change in the coming couple of years.
I live here in Sweden, a very tolerant society in many ways, in this guy’s case (he was once the commander of a Shia militia, a nasty one) no one believed that he was anti Islamic, but that he was hoping to be allowed to stay in the country as his actions, burning the Quran, would be life threatening if he was sent back to Iraq. He also learned along the way that he could make a money from this. The usual suspects sending him money. Anyway the main rumor from the city he was shot in, is it had nothing to do with religion or politics, but that he was banging some neighbors wife, was threatening with a knife, and the neighbor whacked him. That’s only a rumor so maybe not true, so it’s best to wait to see the outcome. But here in Sweden the police have a very low clear up rate.
Free speech is an absolute. You have it or you don’t. Any country that claims to have free speech supports the free expression of all speech, regardless of the tenor, content or target. Any restrictions, conditions or punishment for speech in any form, means you do not have free speech. The United States declares free speech as a fundamental right in its Constitution, but the combination of progressive policies, like DEI, have put that right in danger. Hopefully the current administration will right the ship.
One famous quote Jesus gave is “By their fruits, you shall know them.” Pious conversation is only merely useful; teaching religious tenets has a more authoritative basis; however, to see the VALUE of a religion, do look to the lives and practices of those who “believe”. A Jew who finally peruses a Christian New Testament will immediately notice just how very often the word “love” is used, both for relationship of God to man (and vice versa) and between adherents to Christ’s teaching. Such is “the fruit”. Carry a knife, and, you ain’t no Christian, baby! The concept of “submit”, as Islam enforces, is antithetical to love’s purpose. Stop inflicting terror!
If we really had freedom of speech the fact that some exercise theirs by protesting against it would not matter: because it would also mean that our elites, elected and self-selected, would have stopped, ‘taking the knee’, both metaphorically and, sometimes, literally.
The submission to Islamic violence in the West took visible form with the cartoons published in Denmark. Much ink was spilled over how awful the riots were, but none of the hand-wringers reprinted the cartoons. Supposedly high principles deferred to endless rationalization and calculation that the principles weren’t worth the slightest chance of negative consequences.
I recall reading that a Christian group sought the same deference from the EU against attacks on their faith. They were denied. Clearly they didn’t have sufficient rioters and murderers.
I don’t think so. A complex issue, but Norway and Sweden are trying to protect their citizens. That seems reasonable.
Everyone in my North American high school in the 1960s would have said that Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and Zoroastrians alike have a right to their religious beliefs, and that others have the same right to dismiss those beliefs as metaphysical nonsense. That’s freedom of religion and freedom of speech both, and these rights are perfectly compatible and easily comprehensible.
Fast-forward half a century, and the same former high school students find themselves in a more integrated world that puts them in close proximity to members of a civilization that permits no dissent at all from its particular set of religious beliefs. The notion that these manifestly different approaches to freedom of speech and freedom of religion can be conceptually reconciled is a fantasy: one of them needs to be modified if members of the two civilizations are going to intermingle under a common set of laws.
It’s clear which side has to give way: in a pluralistic world that boasts many religious traditions, for one group to impose its own religious beliefs on everyone else would be an intolerable act of religious imperialism. The would-be imperialists are entitled to keep their own beliefs and practices, and to run their societies as they see fit. But when they emerge onto the wider stage of interaction with the rest of the planet, then in the name of basic fairness they must abandon the expectation that members of other societies that have had no input into those beliefs and practices should nevertheless be bound by their rules and limitations.
Ahmen
Humm now where is that elephant in the room hiding? Simply Islam is following its promise cleansing the West. (even if it takes a thousand yrs) Not so opaque just see what’s on the news everywhere for how many years! So a religious battle hidden under various names including NWO etc. How many billions and billions of $$ does the oil bring to Islamic nations so they learnt from the best in the West and here we are still talking.