Arab leaders courageously tackle region's biggest problem: blasphemy

[Originally posted at NOW]

It’s no secret that the Middle East is a troubled region. What with the first use of chemical weapons since the 1980s adding to the apocalyptic carnage of Syria; full-throttle sectarian slaughter underway in Iraq; a murderous military coup in Egypt; and the unceasing Israeli colonization of the remains of Palestine, the Arab world certainly has no shortage of things to be worrying about.

But while the naïve observer might deem the expression of unorthodox hypotheses about the nature of the Universe to be a matter of rather less urgency than the above examples, a number of Arab governments have astutely identified that the reverse is the case, and are working as we speak on a draft law to tackle that most menacing of all Middle Eastern ills: blasphemy.

Encouragingly, the officials preparing the law will improve on prior efforts to tackle this fons et origo of Arab woes by expanding it to all of their nations’ blasphemers, wherever they are in the world.

“All penal laws in Arab countries criminalize defamation of religions but there are no specific sanctions when an abuser is outside the country,” explained Qatari Justice Ministry official Ebrahim Mousa Al Hitmi. The ingenious twist of this latest initiative – expected to generate incalculable improvements in security, education, and economic performance region-wide – is that “it gives every state the right to put on trial those who abuse and hold in contempt religions even if they are outside the country.” [Emphasis added.]

The forward-looking move has already inspired change beyond the GCC peninsula. Authorities here in Lebanon, which has now been without a government for over six months and has witnessed a spate of horrific car bombs in recent weeks, have taken it upon themselves to exclude from an upcoming film festival two works that might very easily have slipped through the net of less vigilant censors. Had the films – one dealing with homosexual love, the other with temporary marriage in Islam – been screened, God only knows what the consequences for infrastructure development, legal reform, and meeting the challenges of the Syrian refugee influx might have been.

Don't get your hopes up about Pakistan

[Originally posted at NOW Lebanon]

Scanning The Guardian’s latest dispatch on the (latest) Pakistan blasphemy case, I was slowly but steadily driven to a stupor of incredulity. Hold on a moment, what’s all this? The chairman of a major Islamic council sides with the accused in a blasphemy case? Says “our heads are bowed in shame for what [the accuser] did”? Calls the defendant (a Christian, no less) a “daughter of the nation”? Is this Pakistan we’re talking about?

As the journalist talked up the “remarkable turn of events in a country where individuals accused of insulting Islam are almost never helped by powerful public figures,” I began to wonder if a new dawn really had broken on the society that, a year ago, was showering the murderer of a blasphemy reformist with rose petals.

Turn to the Pakistani press, however, and the scribblers take a somewhat different angle. Allama Tahir Ashrafi, the same cleric described in the Guardian’s piece, is found warning “of a conspiracy to do away with the blasphemy law which, he said, would never be allowed.” In his own words: “We support the […] judicious use of blasphemy law but will never allow repeal of the law on flimsy grounds or under international pressure.” A watered-down version of the same quote was pushed to the final paragraph of the Guardian’s story.

You have to love that “judicious”. No doubt there should also be “judicious” killings of apostates, adulterers and homosexuals, in addition to “judicious” second-class citizenship for members of the Ahmadi sect. An old joke among atheists is that blasphemy is a “victimless crime.” Sadly in Pakistan, as in other countries frenzied with religion, the victims are all too real.

Israel okays book licensing murder of non-Jews

[Originally posted at NOW Lebanon]

And for today’s sermon, let’s take a dip into the collected wisdom of West Bank Rabbis Yitzhak Shapira and Yosef Elitzur, as published in their 2009 opus, Torat Hamelech (“The King’s Torah”):

“Anywhere where the influence of gentiles [non-Jews] constitutes a threat to the life of Israel, it is permissible to kill them.”

“When we approach a gentile who has violated the seven laws of Noah and kill him out of devotion to the upholding of these Noahide laws, this is not forbidden.”

“You can kill those [gentiles] who are not supporting or encouraging murder in order to save the lives of Jews.”

According to the BBC, this inspired piece of exegesis even “suggests that babies can justifiably be killed if it is clear they will grow up to pose a threat.”

For some reason, the book – which was endorsed by relatively mainstream rabbis including Dov Lior and Yaakov Yosef – raised objections when it was published, prompting the Israeli attorney general to investigate whether it constituted incitement to racism and/or violence. Protests erupted in Orthodox circles last year when Lior and Yosef were taken into custody. In a statement yesterday, the attorney concluded that there was “insufficient evidence” for a prosecution.

Being a free speech absolutist, in one sense I applaud the decision. The pseudo-liberal concepts of “hate speech” and “abuse of free expression” don’t sit well with my enthusiastic blasphemy, and I believe we surrender dearly-bought terrain to fascism when we make it a crime to write words.

But ask yourself this: would the attorney general have ruled the same way had the book been written by Islamic fundamentalists, calling for the murder of Jewish babies? To ask the question is to answer it. So far from being a victory for liberal democracy, therefore, the decision is merely yet another example of the Judeochauvinist bigotry that poisons even (or especially) the highest echelons of the Israeli establishment.

A note on International Blasphemy and Apostasy Day

[Originally posted at NOW Lebanon, with my italics restored]


For anyone feeling less than totally enthused about tomorrow’s March 14 commemoration at BIEL, perhaps I might draw your attention to something else that will be occurring at the time: the International Day of Action to Defend Blasphemers and Apostates.

Organised by One Law for All, the British group that makes the insane suggestion that there ought to be just the one set of laws for all citizens, this day honours “the critics of religion in order to highlight medieval laws and exert pressure to save the lives of the women and men facing execution, imprisonment or threats” from the various “religious authorities” around the world. 

While stressing that “there are countless people awaiting [such] punishment”, the group highlights ten causes célèbres, including the Saudi blogger Hamza Kashgari and the Egyptian actor Adel Imam. I would have added my favourite example of Walid Husayin, the West Bank blogger arrested by the Palestinian Authorities for running an atheist blog, who is thus a victim of both Jewish and Islamic fanaticism simultaneously. And I’m sure that all Lebanese could think of one for themselves without a moment’s pause.

Now, before you start telling me how incredibly ‘insensitive’ it is to ‘insult’ these ‘great’ religions, allow me to make something very clear. I’m not asking for the right to torch a Qur’an, or to desecrate a church or, indeed, to blow one up – such offenses against humanity and civilisation are best left to the faithful themselves. I absolutely do assert the right, however, to satirise religion; to have fun at its expense; and to subject its texts to literary criticism; just as I absolutely assert the right to disbelieve its metaphysical claims. 

In other words, I assert the right to take sole ownership of the thoughts in my head, thank you very much – and in a week that has seen the Lebanese cabinet propose a law prohibiting “immoral” web content, this right may well need some more convincing assertion in the very near future. 

So, in that spirit, how about this from Ricky Gervais, blasphemer and apostate par excellence: