Arrested for a TikTok Video

A blasphemy case in Egypt shows how Sharia can destroy lives.

Writing in the ever-farther-left Bulwark on Sunday, Jonathan Cohn complained that while “Republicans keep saying their campaign against Abdul El-Sayed isn’t trying to exploit fear and hatred of Muslims,” but “then they keep doing things to prove that it is.” Cohn zeroed in on patriotic opposition to Sharia as an example of this alleged exploitation of fear and hatred, and echoed the leftist talking point that Sharia is simply benign religious law that no non-Muslim need be concerned about. A recent incident in Egypt, however, demonstrates anew the truth that contradicts all this propaganda.

Cohn explained that “when El-Sayed, then a 24-year-old medical student, said he wanted to conduct himself in ‘the sharia-compliant way,’ he meant using the religious code as a guideline for his personal life. It’s similar to the way a Catholic might describe following the Church’s dogma and doctrine, as several scholars explained to me, or to the way a Jew might describe observing ‘Halakhah,’ which covers everything from prayer to diet.”

Sharia does indeed cover those things, but it also contains elements that are political, supremacist, expansionist, and violent, including detailed regulations for jihad warfare against non-Muslims and the institutionalized subjugation of those non-Muslims in an Islamic society. Cohn makes no mention of those aspects of Sharia, and may not even be aware that they exist, although even the most cursory examination of the Islamic Republics of Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, or at Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Somalia, would have given him a quick lesson in what Sharia actually looks like in practice.

Apparently at least dimly aware that there is abundant reason not to think of Sharia as entirely harmless and cuddly, Cohn invokes two experts to tell us that Sharia really isn’t anything in particular at all. He quotes David Cook, who is that tiniest of minorities, a generally sensible and honest professor, saying: “The people that are making the most blatant comments about sharia appear to present it as if it’s something unified, something like the U.S. Constitution that you could apply ‘sharia’—which, from a classical point of view, is really quite laughable.”

Not really laughable at all, in fact. The Sharia scholar Nuh Ha Mim Keller explains that “the four Sunni schools of Islamic law, Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi‘i and Hanbali, are identical in approximately 75 percent of their legal conclusions, while the remaining questions, variances within a single family of explainers of the Holy Koran and prophetic sunna, are traceable to methodological differences in understanding or authentication of the primary textual evidence, differing viewpoints sometimes reflected in even a single school.”

That sounds far more unified than Cook presented, and explains why Sharia looks so very similar in all the countries where it is implemented. It also justifies opposition to it as a generally unified system that is at variance with the U.S. Constitution in numerous particulars.

Cohn also quotes the egregious Harvard pseudo-academic Noah Feldman, whose whitewashed view of Sharia led the U.S. government to implement Sharia constitutions in Iraq and Afghanistan. “Islam,” says Feldman, “much like Judaism, has many different overlapping claims to authority. And none is the final word.”

Sure. But the idea that Sharia scholars are engaging in spirited disagreement among themselves over issues involving jihad violence and the subjugation of non-Muslims is wishful thinking at best. A recent incident in Egypt demonstrates that. Alliance Defending Freedom reported Thursday that “six young Christian men have spent two weeks in prison for sharing a TikTok post that authorities considered offensive to Islam. The video featured an audio clip from a popular Egyptian comedy film, which depicts a scene of prisoners who are unfamiliar with the Quranic prayers. The six, all between the ages of 17 and 23, posted the video simply reenacting the scene from the movie. Days later, they were detained and questioned by police on charges of ‘exploiting’ and ‘insulting’ the Islamic religion.”

Kelsey Zorzi, Senior Counsel and Vice President of International Advocacy at Alliance Defending Freedom, stated: “This is tragically common in Egypt, where Christians face threats, discrimination, and ultimately imprisonment for speech that is only seen as problematic because they are not part of the majority religion. These young men did nothing but share a lighthearted video with a voiceover from a popular and uncontroversial film, as many others on the platform have done. There is no reason to charge or imprison them. We have seen far too many cases of this nature in Egypt. Christians should never have to fear punishment for sharing a post.”

There are many stories out of Pakistan of Christians being imprisoned for supposedly committing blasphemy and insulting Islam, but such stories are not so common coming out of Egypt, which is supposedly a less Sharia-adherent and tolerant place than the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. But Sharia blasphemy laws remain a significant element of the culture of all too many majority-Muslim countries, and they can be used to victimize Christians and other religious minorities at any time. The Christians in such cases have essentially no recourse, as authorities are generally sympathetic to their accusers.

These six young Christians in prison in Egypt for reenacting a movie scene in a TikTok video show the grim reality of what life is really like under Sharia for non-Muslims. Will Jonathan Cohn, David Cook, or Noah Feldman take note? Don’t hold your breath.