ESCALATING ISLAMOPHOBIA: THE CASE OF BLASPHEMOUS CONTENT AGAINST THE PROPHET MUHAMMAD (Sallallāhu ‘Alaihi wa Ālihi wa Sallam)

Abstract

Over the past two decades the world has seen a sharp increase in Islamophobic events. Blasphemy against the Prophet Muhammad (Sallallāhu ‘Alaihi wa Ālihi wa Sallam), burnings of the Holy Quran have been few of the disturbing events that have provided grief and anguish to the 1.9 billion Muslims in the world. While Islamophobia manifests in various forms, the place of the Prophet of Islam (Sallallāhu ‘Alaihi wa Ālihi wa Sallam) is sacred to Muslims all over the globe and any attack on his personality is seen as condemnable. In this paper, I shall seek to study specifically the blasphemous content against his person. For this I have chosen two events. These two events garnered a strong reaction from the Muslim World. The first event is from France, where the showcasing of offensive caricatures in the name of freedom of speech amassed a strong outrage. The second event took place in 2022 in India where offensive comments against the Prophet Muhammad (Sallallāhu ‘Alaihi wa Ālihi wa Sallam) by a Bharatiya Janata Party spokeswoman accumulated condemnation by the Islamic world. I shall be highlighting the reactions and the effect the incidents congregated. This paper makes a small contribution in providing proposals on how to combat a global challenge.