Abstract
From Greece to Saudi Arabia, blasphemy is a serious matter.
The conflict between blasphemy and free speech has reared its ugly head again. Not since the 2005 Danish cartoons controversy have Muslims around the world come out in droves to protest against an insult to Islam. The catalyst for recent violence, which led to a number of deaths, was The Innocence of Muslims – a budget film produced with the clear intention of inflaming tensions in the Muslim world.
As a result, ideologically-diverse leaders, from Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah to Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, have called on the UN to criminalise religious defamation. Their appeal has reignited a longstanding campaign for the international body to protect religion – a proposal finally dropped from a resolution on religious intolerance in December 2011 after more than a decade.
The latest debate on blasphemy laws has come at a crucial point in Egypt’s history. In the wake of The Innocence of Muslims, authorities are pushing for anti-blasphemy laws to be enshrined in the new constitution. If passed, the provision will strengthen existing – and regularly used – blasphemy articles in the penal code. Blasphemy charges have since been pursued with vigour. In September 2012 alone, a court upheld a six-year prison sentence for an Egyptian Christian found guilty of blasphemy, a Muslim man was charged with defaming Christianity after tearing up a Bible and an Egyptian rights group lodged a case against a Shia Muslim for desecrating a mosque.
Freedom of expression in Tunisia, the country credited with kicking off the Arab Spring, has similarly hit a brick wall. In August, the ruling Ennahda party submitted a bill to criminalise offences against ‘sacred values’ (see pp. 148-151). If passed, those found guilty of insulting the three Abrahamic religions could be sentenced to up to two years in prison, while repeat offenders face up to four years. The draft legislation was written in response to Tunisia’s annual Printemps des Arts exhibition, which sparked violent riots in June. At the centre of the controversy were four ‘blasphemous’ artworks. Most offensive was one that spelled out Sobhane Allah (Glory to God) in ants.
In May 2012, Kuwaiti parliamentarians voted in favour of a legal amendment to make insulting God, the Prophet Mohammed, his wife and companions punishable by death. Although Emir Sabah al Ahmad al Jaber al Sabah has rejected the amendment, MPs can still choose to overrule him with a two-thirds majority vote. The decision to amend the law followed the Twitter ‘blasphemy’ case of Hamad al Naqi, who was found guilty of a litany of charges in June. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
In neighbouring Saudi Arabia, journalist Hamza Kashgari fell foul of blasphemy laws in February after posting comments about the Prophet Mohammed on Twitter. Kashgari fled to Malaysia following calls for his execution but was promptly sent back to Saudi Arabia, where defaming the Prophet is punishable by death. He is currently in prison.
When it comes to blasphemy, events in Muslim countries tend to dominate the headlines. And yet, even though the furore over The Innocence of Muslims has been portrayed as an insurmountable cultural clash, blasphemy laws blight the books of democratic and undemocratic countries alike.
One of the most prominent trials of 2012 took place in Russia. The world stood to attention when three members of the anarcho-feminist group Pussy Riot went head-to-head with the Russian state and church. The trio was sentenced to two years in prison, not for blasphemy per se but ‘hooliganism motivated by religious hatred’. Their crime? A 40-second ‘punk-prayer’ in a Moscow church that called on the Virgin Mary to ‘throw Putin out!’. Calls from MPs to beef up punishments for blasphemy – currently a civil offence – have since grown louder.
Members of punk band Pussy Riot were found guilty of ‘hooliganism motivated by religious hatred’, Moscow, 17 August 2012
Credit: Maxim Shipenko/EPA/Alamy
Nadia, Masha and Katya, as they have come to be affectionately known, were not the only musicians to feel the long arm of the church this year. In January, Polish pop star Dorota Rabczewska, more commonly known by her stage name Doda, was ordered to pay a fine of 5,000 zlotys (US$1600) for offending religious sensibilities under Article 196 of the penal code. Doda angered Catholic groups when, in a 2009 interview, she said she believed in dinosaurs more than she did the Bible. ‘It’s hard to believe in something written by people who drank too much wine and smoked herbal cigarettes,’ said the 28-year-old.
Nor is Poland the only democracy to still have a blasphemy law on its books. Although rarely enforced, the very existence of such legislation exerts a chilling effect on free speech. In the Netherlands, politicians have spent the last few years vacillating over the abolition of their blasphemy law, not used since 1966, when the writer Gerard Reve was prosecuted for a novel in which the narrator has sex with God in the form of a donkey. He was cleared two years later. Despite its disuse, in 2009 lawmakers abandoned plans to scrap the law in a concession to the Calvinist Political Reformed Party, a fundamentalist Christian party and coalition member.
Blasphemy also features in legislation in neighbouring Norway and Denmark, though no one has been prosecuted in these countries since the early 20th century. In Denmark, where anyone who ‘publicly offends or insults a religion that is recognised in the country’ faces a fine or up to four months in jail, judges ruled in favour of free speech during the Danish cartoons furore.
In Greece, a member country of the European Union that enshrines freedom of expression in its constitution, offending Christianity or any other ‘known religion’ is a limitation that is enforced with gusto. In addition, the country’s penal code includes blasphemy and religious insult clauses under section 7, Articles 198 and 199. Article 198 punishes any public and malicious blasphemy against God with a maximum of two years in prison, while Article 199 prescribes up to two years’ imprisonment for ‘one who publicly and maliciously and by any means blasphemes the Greek Orthodox Church or any other religion tolerable in Greece’. The authorities maintain that the legislation is necessary to safeguard social harmony.
According to a Freedom House report, blasphemy cases are not uncommon in Greece. Although most are considered ‘petty’ and dropped due to a lack of malicious intent, artists regularly find themselves on the wrong side of the law. In 2005, authorities accused Austrian cartoonist Gerhard Haderer of blasphemy when his satirical book The Life of Jesus, which depicts Christ as a binge-drinking, pot-smoking hippie, was published in Greece – without his knowledge. Haderer was found guilty of malicious blasphemy and handed a six-month suspended jail sentence in absentia. His sentence was overturned following protests from European NGOs.
Ireland introduced a blasphemy law in January 2010, punishing guilty parties with fines of up to €25,000 (US$32,000). On the day the law went into effect, advocacy group Atheist Ireland published 25 blasphemous statements on its website, including a quote from evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins calling the Old Testament God a ‘petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak’ and ‘a capriciously malevolent bully’. Encouragingly, the law is yet to be enforced and, in March 2010, the government announced it would hold a referendum on its abolition.
Looking further east to India, where religious sensitivities are treated with kid gloves, Sanal Edamaruku, the founder-president of Rationalist International, sparked ire in 2012 for suggesting that the source of so-called ‘holy water’ dripping from a statue of Christ in a Mumbai church was in fact a leaky drain. Following his announcement, the heads of two Catholic organisations filed charges against him for ‘deliberately hurting religious feelings and attempting malicious acts intended to outrage the religious sentiments of any class or community’. Edamaruku fled to Finland to avoid arrest.
Gerhard Haderer, who was found guilty of blasphemy in Greece in 2002
Credit: Reuters
Even in the USA, where the First Amendment provides the world’s most robust defence of free speech, six states – Massachusetts, Michigan, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Wyoming – have blasphemy laws. Although the last prosecution for blasphemy in the USA was in the 19th century, in 2010 a Pennsylvania filmmaker had a brush with the law over the name of his company: I Choose Hell Productions. Under state law, businesses are prohibited from choosing names that contain words that ‘constitute blasphemy, profane cursing or swearing or that profane the Lord’s name’.
As the debate over the defamation of religion rages once more, one need only look at these examples to see that, ultimately, blasphemy laws do not work. They do not promote respect for religion or greater tolerance as intended but instead are misused to hound religious and ethnic minorities, silence political rivals and settle personal scores. In many countries, from Tunisia to Greece, blasphemy laws are used to choke artistic expression. As the violent riots over The Innocence of Muslims have shown, the charge of blasphemy can also be used as a political tool and a mask for other feelings, in this case anti-American sentiment. Meanwhile, democratic countries cannot justify keeping blasphemy laws on their books while arguing against an international law on religious defamation.