Today Muslims are always ridiculed for anything to do with their belief and their way of life. The unbelievers know that the Muslims believe in the Prophet, honour him and follow to the details of his words and actions. So, we all basically know what ridiculing the Prophet entails, and what the possible outcome could be.
But we also know what disbelief means and what it entails. It means rejection, and may include ridiculing of what is being rejected. The Qur’an has made it very clear that it is one of the features of the unbelievers, and the early history of Islam is abound with narrations about insults and ridicules the Prophet and his companions had to face.
It is normal or rational for a person not to believe in what is ridiculous to believe in, and ridiculous for him not to believe in what is reasonable. So ridiculous basically means irrational, and our rejection of what is ridiculous comes from a natural rejection of what is irrational. So, if we find someone ridiculing a particular view out of ignorance and arrogance, not because the opinion is truly ridiculous, then we must say that he is actually ridiculous and irrational.
It is obvious here that being ridiculous is tantamount to being irrational. Since rationality defines humanity, being ridiculous ultimately means being inhuman or non-human. Now it should be clear why ridiculing a person or a community is a grave matter, and why it could lead to enmity and disaster. Yet in some community, which boasts itself as being the champion of freedom and human right, ridiculing what others take as sacred is part of what they define as freedom and right. In other words, as far as they are concerned, it is part of being human. And they don’t realize, or they simply ignore, the fact that their idea of humanity is not universally acknowledged by all.
Now let us return to the question of belief and rationality. Islam is a religion of knowledge. It does not encourage blind following, but insists that every Muslim seeks adequate knowledge to support his faith. So his first religious obligation is to know God, because all other obligations come from that, including belief in the Prophet. Since God, according to Islam, is a free and willing agent, sending a Prophet to mankind to convey His Messaage is just a possible act. It is not an irrational belief, and as such, to mock the belief is instead irrational.
The real problem lies in the first premise, namely that God exists. This is what the secular people deny or prefer to ignore. Let is be clear from the outset that denying itself is a belief, and hence subject to a rational scrutiny as well. If believing in God is mocked because of lack of ‘hard’ (i.e. physical) evidence, then the detractor could say that disbelief is a bigger mockery because it denies reason itself by preferring chance over intelligent design. Let us say that this is a long standing debate without a clear-cut victor and stop at that, meaning, let us let everybody make their own mind with regard to this. Yet, this is not really the case.
In the West, due to their personal experience in history, religion is seen as an oppressor of reason and freedom, while secularization has been applauded as the solution. Their bad experience with religion has led them to believe that the Muslims have also been suffering the same fate, hence, they must apply the same solution Islam. This is really ridiculous, because it betrays ignorance and arrogance. Islam is not Christianity, and the Western idea of religion does not apply to Islam. They must stop thinking of themselves as the most evolved human species, and the rest of mankind are simply a step behind in term of their cultural development.
The secular West has to wake up and admit that their narrative of being human is not the only narrative in existence, let alone the ultimate one. Not to admit this fact is tantamount to being ridiculous, plain stupid and arrogant.
The Muslims have their own idea about being human. Ridiculing the Prophet is similar to undermining the Muslims’ understanding of humanity, because the Prophet to them is the most excellent human being, and he is dearer to them than their own parents or their own selves. The Prophet does not allow Muslims ridiculing what sacred to others, let alone to behave violently as the terrorists did, but there is no guarantee that the message reaches everybody, or that it would not be distorted. Hence, ridiculing others is not a good idea if we want to co-exist peacefully.