Irshad Manji's column for the The Wall Street Journal is now available online at her own website. Key excerpt:
For one thing, the Koran itself points out that there will always be non-believers, and that it's for Allah, not Muslims, to deal with them. More than that, the Koran says there is "no compulsion in religion." Which suggests that nobody should be forced to treat Islamic norms as sacred.
That logic continues to be blithely ignored, most tellingly yesterday when Iran reconfirmed its fatwa on Salman Rushdie:
Iran said on Tuesday that the fatwa or religious edict condemning British author Salman Rushdie to death over his novel The Satanic Verses will remain in force forever.
The announcement was made on the anniversary of the 1989 edict issued by the leader of Iran's Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and comes amid global Muslim outrage over cartoons denigrating the prophet Muhammad.
