It's been a busy couple of weeks and I haven't managed to update this blog, but here's some links to some very interesting posts on blasphemy and secularism on Howard Friedman's always-excellent Religion Clause Blog:
* Atheist parents in Ontario have a hearing before the province's Human Rights Tribunal on a claim of religious discrimination. The parents were refused permission by a school to distribute a book on free-thought to 5th grade students in the same way that Gideon Bibles are distributed (here).
* In Russia, Orthodox Christian activists vandalized Moscow's Erotic Art Museum (here).
* French tourists were convicted and given suspended sentences under a Sri Lankan law prohibiting insults to religion. The tourists had taken photos of themselves pretending to kiss Buddha statutes (here).
* Pakistan arrested an illiterate Christian girl for blasphemy, but the country's Prime Minister called for caution in applying the laws and for a full investigation of the incident. Accounts differ, but according to some reports the girl is 11 or 12 years old, may suffer from Down's Syndrome, and inadvertently burned some pages of the Qur'an along with some other papers (here).
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