Rimsha Masih, a Christian girl accused of blasphemy sits in helicopter after her release from jail in Rawalpindi on Sept. 8, 2012. (AFP/GETTY IMAGES) In his recent speech at the U.N. General Assembly, amid global protests and calls to ban perceived insults against religion, President Obama gave a stirring defense of the right to freedom of expression. Like me, the majority of Americans are Christian, and yet we do not ban blasphemy against our most sacred beliefs. In a diverse society, efforts to restrict speech can become a tool to silence critics, or oppress minorities, he said
Muslim leaders are using the controversy over a YouTube video to renew their push at the United Nations for a defamation of religions resolutiona global blasphemy code. Speaking for the 56-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), Pakistans ambassador Zamir Akram said the video, like Koran-burnings and anti-Islamic cartoons, is flagrant incitement to violence that should not be protected by law. The Arab League is also calling for the international community to criminalize blasphemy.
While it might be tempting to treat a non-binding U.N. measure as benign or irrelevant, that would be a mistake. The defamation of religions resolution would validate the national blasphemy laws that have led to persecution and violence in many countries and lead to their proliferation.
Proponents of blasphemy laws promote them in the name of protecting religion. In fact, as our report Blasphemy Laws Exposed: The Consequences of Criminalizing Defamation of Religions reveals such laws are a grave threat to religious freedom. Analyzing more than a hundred cases in 18 countries, we found that governments and members of majority faiths have used these laws to stifle dissent and persecute religious minorities.
Insultsor perceived insultsagainst religions or religious symbols can cause real offense. But laws designed to curb such slurs only intensify the sense of grievance and put the issue in the realm of politics, often with deadly consequences. Rather than provide a peaceful mechanism to resolve conflicts, blasphemy laws tend to inflame passions and encourage violence, in the way that Jim Crow laws in the United States gave license to lynch mobs.
The cautionary example is Pakistan, where charges of blasphemy have led repeatedly to bloodshed. Its draconian laws are products of General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haqs military rule in the 1970s and 1980s. To build support from fundamentalists, he embraced a program of Islamization and increased the severity of the blasphemy law that had existed since the countrys formation in 1947. Since 1985, Pakistans courts have handled more than 4,000 blasphemy cases.
The case of Rimsha Masihthe mentally impaired 14-year-old Christian girl arrested after a neighbor accused her of burning the Koranmade international headlines, yet it is more representative than extraordinary. Consider Fanish Masih, the 19-year-old Christian found dead in jail after being arrested for allegedly washing pages of the Koran down a drain. Or Muhammad Amjad, a mentally impaired Muslim charged with blasphemy after a cleric hostile to his family claimed hed burned the Koran.
In Rimsha Masihs case, a mob surrounded a police station and demanded that she be charged with a crime; that, too, is not uncommon. Where there is a charge of blasphemy, there is often a mob, like the one in the village of Bahmani that attacked Christians, burned churches, and destroyed homes after a man publicly accused another of defaming Muhammad. Increasingly, when accused blasphemers stand trial, vigilantes are called to arms over the mosque loudspeakers and urged to take the law into their own hands if the court does not hand down a guilty verdict.
Violence victimizes not just alleged blasphemers and religious minorities but also those who defend them. Two prominent Pakistani politicians who spoke out against the blasphemy lawsSalman Taseer, governor of Punjab Province, and Minority Affairs Minister Shahbaz Bhattiwere assassinated. Taseers daughter, Shehrbano Taseer, a journalist for Newsweek Pakistan, is carrying on her fathers dangerous work. Last October, when she came to New York to receive our human rights award, she said blasphemy laws are instruments of repression and terror that ruin the lives of people every day. Taseer reports that Pakistans blasphemy laws are most often used to settle personal vendettas and land disputes.
Taking the recent media coverage about Muslim rage at face value, you might believe that hyper-sensitive and childlike Muslims are poised to take to the streets whenever they see their religion disparaged. In fact, however, if you trace the roots of the furor over alleged blasphemy, you often find people or groups making a play for money, power or revenge. The charges against Rimsha Masih, for example, grew out of an effort to expel Christians from the neighborhooda successful effort, it turned out, as hundreds fled for safety following her arrest.
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Blasphemy, right to freedom of expression and our most sacred beliefs
