Dutch Politician Prosecuted for Anti-Islam Editorial

The National Post has an article about the trial of Dutch politician Geert Wilders on charges of inciting hatred towards Muslims. Wilders wrote a newspaper column advocating the banning of the Koran and comparing Islam to Nazism. An court ordered the prosecution, but the prosecutors have argued that criticism of a religion is not illegal.

"Where's Muhammad?" Cartoon Pulled by Washington Post

Editors at the Washington Post pulled a cartoon intended to run in one of last week's issues out of fear it might offend Muslims. The cartoon depicted a busy park full of innocuous activities, with the caption "Where's Muhammad?" The cartoon, of course, is a parody of the famous "Where's Waldo?" series of children's books, and Muhammad does not appear in the cartoon. The Post's ombudsman has written that, in his opinion, the editors should have ran the cartoon because "the cartoon is not a blasphemous attack on the prophet. If anything, it's a powerful and witty endorsement of freedom of expression."

"Is Critique Secular? Blasphemy, Injury, and Free Speech"

Talal Asad, Wendy Brown, Judith Butler, and Saba Mahmood, Is Critique Secular? Blasphemy, Injury, and Free Speech (Berkeley, CA: Townsend Center for the Humanities, 2009).

In the Fall of 2007, UC-Berkeley held a symposium on the topic "Is Critique Secular?" The results have been published in a slim 153-page volume, with the subtitle of "Blasphemy, Injury, and Free Speech." The book consists of two main essays, "Free Speech, Blasphemy and Secular Criticism" by Talal Asad, and "Religious Reason and Secular Affect: An Incommensurable Divide?" by Saba Mahmood, plus a response by Judith Butler and then replies to Butler's response by Asad and Mahmood.

An important thing to note is that these essays are written in the style of literary criticism, and bear all of the hallmarks of that discipline (anyone who has been to panels at the Modern Language Association will know what I'm talking about): they are jargon-heavy, opaque, discursive, theory-heavy, implicitly critical of the West, and prone to leaving the reader feel like a lot of words have been expended without concrete ideas having been expressed. A subtle implication throughout, one which I think lacks historical foundation, is that "blasphemy" is purely something the secular West does to the religious East as an act of oppression.

Those (very large) caveats aside, there is something interesting in Mahmood's essay, and Butler's response to it, on the nature of the "harm" felt by Muslims in response to the Danish Muhammed cartoons. Briefly put, the argument is that Muslims identify so strongly with the Prophet that insults to him bring about emotions of grief and emotional pain that are difficult to understand and account for in the traditional framework of "blasphemy vs. freedom of speech." As Butler explains it, the cartoons are problematic not because of the offensive ideas inherent within them but because they are seen as attempts to "coerce disbelief" and "any attempt to coerce someone away from his or her belief is an effort to break a relation to a transcendence by which one is sustained." (p. 118)

French Blogger Arrested for Burning Koran

The National Post reports that French authorities have arrested a man on charges of religious hatred for posting a video of himself on the Internet burning a Koran and then urinating on it to put out the flames.

"Ranters Run Amok and Other Adventures in the History of the Law"

Leonard W. Levy, Ranters Run Amok and Other Adventures in the History of the Law (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2000).

Before his death in 2006, Leonard Levy was one of America's foremost legal historians. Levy wrote on a variety of topics, and was probably most famous for his books on early American constitutional history. Two of his books (Treason Against God: A History of the Offense of Blasphemy and Blasphemy: Verbal Offense Against the Sacred From Moses to Salman Rushdie) remain the most comprehensive sources on how blasphemy law evolved from its earliest incarnations to the 20th century.

Levy's 2000 book Ranters Run Amok and Other Adventures in the History of the Law is a collection of miscellaneous essays about a variety of topics, including the Fourth Amendment, the Fifth Amendment, Massachusetts Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw, and more. Two of the essays may be of interest to blasphemy scholars.

The book's first and longest essay is a nice history of the Ranters, a mid-Seventeenth Century English sect. The Ranters were a motley collection of hedonistic religious seekers who professed a variety of doctrines which mostly seemed to center on the idea that there is no such thing as sin and that, therefore, traditional social expectations relating to chastity, sobriety, frugality, etc., need not be observed. It's not surprising that Ranter practices (public drunkenness, vulgarity, and sexual activity) caused extreme consternation in English society. Although blasphemy was prohibited in England prior to the coming of the Ranters, the group was seen as so obnoxious by Parliament that special blasphemy laws were crafted to target the group's doctrines (pp. 33-34). A full history of blasphemy in England would be incomplete with a discussion of the Ranters, and this essay displays an admirable use of primary sources and engaging prose. I haven't compared whether or how much this essay adds to the information on the Ranters provided in Levy's other books on blasphemy.

Another essay "Harvard University Press, et al., v. A Book", is something of an odd duck. Essentially, it's a chronicle of the struggles Levy had with Harvard University Press and peer reviewers over whether his books on blasphemy were of sufficient quality to be published. Although initial contracts had been signed between Levy and the Press, the Press and its reviewers did not give a greenlight to the manuscript, which led Levy into a long and enervating (to the reader) attempt to change their minds. He wasn't successful, and the books had to be taken elsewhere. Unfortunately, Levy doesn't come across in the best light here, as his constant back-and-forth with editors and peer reviewers makes him seem defensive, bitter, and stubborn. Anyone who has had experience dealing with the peer review process can understand how exasperating it can sometimes be, but this essay would have been better off remaining in a diary than in a collection of essays. The main area of dispute between Levy and his reviewers centered on his work on blasphemy as it relates to the trial of Jesus, so only scholars specifically interested in that particular issue might have any reason to seek out this essay.

Remarks on International Blasphemy Rights Day (2010)

On Thursday, I delivered introductory remarks for the International Blasphemy Rights Day event sponsored by the Centre for Inquiry at the 2010 Atheist Alliance International/Humanist Canada North American Convention. That event, and the convention as a whole, was interesting, educational, and simply a lot of fun. I want to thank the organizers of the event for inviting me and putting on a great show. Here is the draft text of the remarks I gave at the IBRD event:

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Thank you all for coming to this special event in recognition of International Blasphemy Rights Day.

Blasphemy is a topic that often lays dormant for years, until suddenly sprouting into public view—a few weeks ago there was the Florida preacher who wanted to burn the Koran, before that the Danish Muhammad cartoons, and going back further the uproar of Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses. However, blasphemy as a purely religious concept, and the peaceful give-and-take between so-called blasphemous speech and its inevitable condemnation by religious leaders is a phenomenon that fits easily within the free speech tradition of a healthy democratic society.

However, International Blasphemy Rights Day marks the dismay that advocates of freedom of speech, thought, and religion feel all over the globe about the curious persistence of anti-blasphemy legislation.

When I started studying blasphemy laws several years ago, I thought they were true legal anachronisms, obsolete pieces of legislation that stuck around, more or less harmlessly, because legislatures were simply too lazy to repeal them. And sometimes this is true—Canada, for example, still has a law on the books against “blasphemous libel”, but it hasn’t been used successfully by the government since the 1930s.

However, old laws, including old blasphemy laws, don’t always stay dead. England’s common law ban on blasphemy was inert for 55 years before leading to a conviction in the late 1970s, and was invoked (fortunately unsuccessfully) by Muslim activists in the late 1980s against the publishers of Salman Rushdie’s book and then just a few years ago against the stage production Jerry Springer: The Opera . Ireland’s ban remained unused for 141 years before an unsuccessful prosecution against a newspaper in 1996—and just last year, the Irish Parliament passed a new ban on blasphemy. Pakistan provides an even more startling example, as religious minorities are often targeted by domestic blasphemy laws that provide support and rhetorical ammunition to the vigilante-style murder of alleged blasphemers.

Perhaps the greatest threat the West faces, however, is the old wine of blasphemy being poured into a new glass and given a different name. These new laws, although different in concept and focus, often replicate the effects of blasphemy laws. Worse, courts and the general public seem to think they’re necessary if multiculturalism is to flourish. Inevitably, however, they simply cause more conflict as religious groups have a new means to express their frustration over speech they don’t like. In Australia, they’re called “religious vilification” laws and have led to court cases between Christians and Muslims; in Canada, they’re called “religious hate propaganda” laws and have led to magazines being taken in front of human rights commissions; in the United Nations, they’re called “Defamation of Religions” resolutions, and have been the basis of several successful resolutions before the General Assembly.

In other words, there is a global trend of anti-blasphemy laws being given new vigor by being re-packaged. In many countries around the world, the threat of being prosecuted under blasphemy laws or their modern-day counterparts is a real one—and atheists, humanists, and freethinkers can easily become victims.

The main idea I want to leave you with is that the promise of the Enlightenment and Modernity has certainly not yet been fulfilled in this area. Laws against blasphemy remain a genuine threat to the ideals of secularism and free speech, and this is the reality we should recognize on International Blasphemy Rights Day.

"When Multiculturalism Doesn't Work"

The Globe and Mail had this interesting article on Friday on the topic of religious accommodation in Quebec, a province where conflicts between minority religious groups and the government have been especially acute.

Although I'm sympathetic to the argument that religions shouldn't receive "special rights" or "special exemptions" from generally applicable laws, I tend to believe in the doctrine of reasonable accommodation for two main reasons: (1) legislation will always tend to accord with the religious beliefs of the majority of the population (e.g., mainstream Christians in Canada rarely need religious accommodation) and (2) forcing individuals to choose between sincerely held religious beliefs and participation in civic society (schools, employment, etc.) is unconscionable. Thus, I think Sikh police officers should be able to wear turbans on duty, Orthodox Jews should be accorded flexibility on work holidays, etc., assuming of course that in each case no undue hardships would be created.

I would naturally extend this principle to apply to similar sincerely held beliefs of a secular nature (e.g., vegetarianism, pacifism, and others).