Blasphemy: A Very Short Introduction by Yvonne Sherwood

Author:Yvonne Sherwood [Sherwood, Yvonne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Religion, Religious Intolerance; Persecution & Conflict, General, Blasphemy; Heresy & Apostasy, philosophy, Social Science, sociology
ISBN: 9780192518194
Google: 4Sc9EAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2021-08-26T00:30:11.686551+00:00

Chapter 4

Blasphemy and law

The English ‘blasphemer’ and satirist William Hone (1780–1842) complained that the vagueness of the blasphemy laws reminded him of the tyrant of Syracuse, who wrote his laws high up on the walls in very small letters and then brutally punished those who couldn’t read them. He had a point. The former UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, Heiner Bielefeldt, cited the ‘inherent vagueness’ which ‘leaves the whole concept open to abuse’ as the main reason for calling, in 2012, for an end to blasphemy laws. The 2017 report Respecting Rights: Measuring the World’s Blasphemy Laws surveyed the seventy-one blasphemy laws across the globe and came to a similar conclusion: blasphemy laws ‘are vaguely worded, and few specify or limit the forum in which blasphemy can occur’. The report also placed Italy in the top ten of worst offenders, with exactly the same score as Egypt (though the report also noted the new crackdown on freedom of expression under President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, unprecedented in Egypt’s history). It also revealed other shocking statistics, including the fact that only one-third of blasphemy laws require proof of any intention to blaspheme. This might not be so surprising, if we go back to the definition of blasphemy in Chapter 1. If blasphemy is by definition in the ears and eyes of the receiver, then it follows (logically, but dangerously) that blasphemy laws would be relatively unconcerned with the alleged offender and his/her intention to cause pain.

One of the traditional, more comforting, stories of Enlightenment is the idea that we have gradually escaped from the dangerous absolutism and fuzziness of religion into the relative safety, and clarity, of law. Unfortunately it is not possible to make the history of blasphemy laws fit this pattern. It is impossible to tell a story of the clarification of blasphemy because, to be frank (and frank is what one should be in a Very Short Introduction), there really isn’t one. Blasphemy is multifaceted and vague in religious traditions—and it is (differently) multifaceted and vague in modern ‘secular’ law.

In Chapter 3 we saw how, in the Bible and Christian history, blasphemy is social/communal and theological and covers a dizzyingly wide range of offences and responses (from praise to execution!). A blasphemer can be someone who claims miracles; denies miracles; or who commits any act deemed to hurt the good name of the community, an individual person, or a god. In modern secular law, blasphemy has meant all of these things—and more.

Specifically, atheism or secularism has been added to the list. In recent years, blasphemy laws have been used to prosecute Manlio Padovan (a member of the Union of Rational Atheists and Agnostics) for a poster campaign in Italy (‘The bad news is that no god exists. The good news is that you don’t need one’) and Sanal Edamaruku, president of the Indian Rationalist Association, now living in exile in Finland, for mocking miracles by suggesting that the tears of a statue of a weeping Jesus on the cross were really caused by a leaking drain.

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