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This is an excellent piece by @AkyolinEnglish on blasphemy in Islam. Are anti-blasphemy protests about religion or (identity) politics—or both? lawliberty.org/liberty-forum/…
Anti-blasphemy protests are not about protecting the sacred per se, but about protecting what the group holds sacred, and these are different things 
This is interesting: Georgetown's Matthew Anderson interviewed Egyptian Christians who think blasphemy against Islam should be a crime punishable by law
I worry we don't have the right language to debate Islam & blasphemy. Islam's position on blasphemy is a product of a time when religion and politics weren't separate categories. To undermine religion was to undermine the state—effectively becoming act of *political* rebellion
In the pre-modern era, attacking Islam wouldn't have just been about criticizing someone's "personal" faith. Since Islam was the foundation of the *political* order, to criticize it would be to challenge the very legitimacy of the state
As I discuss here in my book #IslamicExceptionalism, apostasy in the pre-modern period would have been treated as a political (and "public") act and not solely a theological position 👇🏽
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