Thursday, January 30, 2014

The problem with blasphemy laws

The problem with blasphemy laws is that the religious majority uses them as weapons of oppression against religious minorities. 

At the moment, there are more and more pending blasphemy cases,’ said I.A. Rahman, one of Pakistan’s leading human rights activists. ‘Extremist organizations demonstrate and raise slogans, and judges are afraid. They agitate all the time, creating hatred, and the government is not doing anything. Successive governments have failed.’"

Source: Pakistan: vigilantes use blasphemy law to target religious minorities | Toronto Star:

Every time I think of blasphemy laws I think of innocent men and women being imprisoned. 

Comments (3)

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Yes, "weapons of oppression against religious minorities" seems to be the function of such laws. A great way to silence one's critics and preserve delusion is to criminalize the expression of dissent.
1 reply · active 584 weeks ago
Exactly! What troubles me is I keep hearing the EU or UN speak in terms of these laws. It's like they don't understand the nature of the beast.
Corruption also plays a part here. As soon as one person can accuse another person and it rest on just their(the accuser's) word, on a matter as tenuous as blasphemy, you have a recipe for extortion. This on top of the Bat Shit Crazy, accusing every loose tongued liberal of offending ephemera. It's poor all round.

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