Silenced describes the dire effects of blasphemy and apostasy restrictions in contemporary Muslim-majority countries, and the promotion of such restrictions internationally, and in the West. In the Muslim world, religious minorities and Muslim reformers are subject to state persecution and targeted by widespread societal violence aimed at silencing any expression that does not conform to the prevailing religious and political ideology. Internationally, for two decades the Organization of the Islamic Conference has been trying within the United Nations to subject Western law and international h ... More

Silenced describes the dire effects of blasphemy and apostasy restrictions in contemporary Muslim-majority countries, and the promotion of such restrictions internationally, and in the West. In the Muslim world, religious minorities and Muslim reformers are subject to state persecution and targeted by widespread societal violence aimed at silencing any expression that does not conform to the prevailing religious and political ideology. Internationally, for two decades the Organization of the Islamic Conference has been trying within the United Nations to subject Western law and international human rights standards to their own blasphemy and apostasy restrictions. In the West, those accused of insulting Islam can be subject to new quasi blasphemy laws and extralegal threats and violence. Victims include politician, writers, cartoonists, scholars and Muslim reformers. These curbs on perceived anti-Islamic speech – whether called blasphemy, defamation of Islam, insulting Islam, or hate speech – are incompatible with democracy and individual human rights. Blasphemy restrictions forcibly silence criticism of dominant religious ideas, especially when those ideas support, and are supported by, political power. When politics and religion are intertwined, there can be no free political debate if there is no free religious debate. As Silenced’s three Muslim contributors make clear, blasphemy rules are bitterly contested within the Muslim world, and "confine the world's Muslim population to a bleak, colorless prison of socio-cultural and political conformity." Without a vigorous defense of individual freedoms of speech and religion, much of the West is heading toward a similar fate.