Blasphemy is defined as the act of expressing disrespect for God or for something sacred, whereas respect is "to pay proper attention to or the willingness to obey".
Being a muslim whenever one hears the word blasphemy one is bound to think about Salman Rushdie, Danish cartoons or maybe some of us might think of Rajpal, the publisher who published Rangeela Rasool, who was later killed by Ghazi Ilmuddin, the latest additions are obvious. Who is the worst of them all?
As the most sacred personality for the muslims is that of Muhammad PBUH so any one who decides to instigate the Muslims seems to have an easy target. As a result alleged Muslims go on chanting around in whatever piece of land they occupy, burning and breaking around whatever they manage to find, even killing people for not joining them.
Everyday, one way or the other, we are bound to neglect the Prophet's teachings more frequently than not and none of us feels shame while preaching them to others. Another way to put it is we commit blasphemy everyday by expressing our disrespect for God in the following ways. When we don't pay proper attention to (disrespect) the message he has sent to us, showing the willingness to obey seems to be a far cry. Our Korans are placed in places which are way too high for us to reach i.e it is not humanly possible to approach them, let alone read them and just forget about understanding.
It seems we have misunderstood the word respect to the extent of controversy. To understand the symbolic nature of our respect towards, our religion in general and, God and his Messenger in particular lets look at the word respect. Respect is the acknowledgment (proper acceptance) of any concept , personality or religion for that matter and to make things a bit more clearer acknowledgment is the recognition of the existence or truth of something.So in short respect is the proper acceptance or recognition of the existence of something.
Coming to the practical ramifications of the word respect lets study the case of Abu Jahl. Abu Jahl was an enemy of the Prophet SAW, he used to say to the Prophet that "I have no doubt in my mind that you are telling the truth but I cannot accept what you preach". If we stick to the above mentioned definition we can conclude that Abu Jahl respected the prophet but did not accept his message. That is more or less the same thing that we are doing.
What made Abu Jahl despicable was the fact that he did not practice what he believed to be true rather he left no stone unturned to stop the truth from spreading and proved to be the worst enemy of Islam. Compliance was the element that made all the difference for him. If he would have complied to what he believed he would have been the best of men.But instead he stood between the truth and the world or at least he tried to stay that way.In that respect He was the worst of the Blasphemers.
Today if we were to name the greatest hindrance in the growth of Islam it would be the Muslims who are proving to be the worst enemies of Islam. We believe Islam to be the true religion and don't bother to practice it. And for those of us who boast about practicing it, we only practice the symbols of Islam and not the essence i.e we keep beards but breed hatred in our hearts for anyone who does not belong to our school of thought.We go around chanting slogans about all that has gone wrong with the world and don't bother to look at our own deeds.We even kill, using the name of RahmatallilAalameen. Well I don't think killing someone or anyone for that matter was part of His teachings. In short we the silent majority of the so called Ummah are the worst of the blasphemers. We are the Abu Jahl's of our time as we say that we believe what our Holy Prophet has taught us but in practice we never comply.
It is symbolic blasphemy that we are against the one that Salman Rushdie has commited as this sort of blasphemy has always proven fruitful for the propagation of Islam i.e whenever such a controversy arises people from all around the world get curious about Islam and it's teachings. But to the other side it is our collective ignorance that is proving to be the worst sort of blasphemy the one that resonates with Abu Jahl's attitude towards our beloved Prophet SAW.
