Abstract
Contemporary Islam presents Europe in particular with a political and moral challenge:
Moderate-progressive Muslims and radical fundamentalist Muslims present differing
visions of the relation of politics and religion and, consequently, differing interpretations
of freedom of expression. There is evident public concern about Western “political
correctness,” when law or policy accommodates censorship of speech allegedly violating
religious sensibilities. Referring to the thought of philosopher Baruch Spinoza, and
accounting for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Universal Islamic
Declaration of Human Rights, and various empirical studies on the religious convictions
of Muslims, it is argued here that: (1) sovereign European state powers should be
especially cautious of legal censorship of speech allegedly violating Muslim religious
sensibilities; and (2) instead of legal moves to censorship, European states should defer to
the principle of separation of religion and state (political authority). Further, a reasonable
interpretation of Islamic jurisprudence allows that matters of religious difference may be
engaged and resolved by appeal to private conscience and ethical judgment, rather than
by appeal to public law per se. In so far as they are 1 representative of contemporary
scholarship, the interpretative positions of Ziad Elmarsafy, Jacques Derrida, and Nasr
Abū Zayd are presented in illustration of this latter point.