Nobel Laureate Malala Yousafzai responds to the murder of Mashal Khan for “blasphemy” by claiming that Muhammad “never advised his followers to ‘be impatient and go around killing people.’”

Is this statement likely to make any Muslims turn away from the idea that “blasphemers” should be murdered? No. And this is because, as is so often the case with statements of this kind, it’s factually false. Islam mandates death for non-Muslim subjects of the Islamic state who mention “something impermissible about Allah, the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), or Islam” (‘Umdat al-Salik, o11.10), and such laws are based upon passages in the Hadith and Sira in which Muhammad orders the murders of people who have insulted him.