Written by Blake Mathews
By Irish law, anyone caught speaking ill of religion or religious figures can be charged with blasphemy and forced to pay a hefty fine.
Much to the disappointment of secularists the world over, this law is not the stuff of European history books. Ireland’s new anti-blasphemy law went into effect on Jan. 1 of this year, but over the past month few have come to its defense.
The law, part of an anti-defamation bill that narrowly passed last summer, defines blasphemy as publishing or proclaiming “matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion.” Offenders can be fined up to 25,000 euros, the equivalent of $35,000.
Keeping a copy of any blasphemous statement is also illegal. The next section of the bill grants Irish police the authority to enter a home, forcibly if necessary, if they have “reasonable grounds for believing” that blasphemous statements are stored therein.
Irish Justice Minister Dermot Ahern introduced the law as a necessary update to a 1961 anti-defamation law that punished blasphemers but did not define blasphemy. In 1991 an Irish commission stated that blasphemy laws were unnecessary and should be repealed, but Ahern successfully argued that the Irish constitution “requires that blasphemy must be punishable by law.”
The day the law became enforceable, the group Atheist Ireland released its own list of 25 blasphemous statements on its Web site. Quoted on the list are noted biologist and atheist Richard Dawkins, Icelandic pop singer Bjork and Pope Benedict XVI, among others. The first two blasphemous entries are credited to Jesus Christ.
Atheist Ireland has spent the last month spreading its list around the Internet, rallying support for its effort to get any reference to blasphemy removed from the Irish constitution. The free-press advocacy group Reporters Without Borders has joined their cause, arguing that the law could be used to squash freedom of expression in Ireland.
“[Blasphemy] is an opinion and, as such, should not be subject to any judicial sanction,” the group said in an official statement.
Some religious scholars are also voicing their concerns about the law. David Wolpe, a rabbi at the Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, was quoted in the Washington Post as saying that government-enforced respect for religion would mark a return to the civil and political abuses of the medieval ages.
“If we have learned anything about religion in the thousands of years of its operation, it is that religion does its best work away from the governmental wheel,” Wople said.
Dr. Monte Cox, dean of Harding’s College of Bible and Religion, said he saw the law as an attempt to prevent violent reprisals like the ones Denmark saw in 2005, after a Danish cartoonist drew comics criticizing and parodying the Islamic prophet Mohammed.
“Europeans themselves are struggling to define what it means to be ‘French’ and ‘German’ in nations swelling with immigrants of non-European descent,” Cox said. “When even famously neutral Switzerland bans the construction of minarets, signature Islamic architecture, you know this is a problem.”
So far, no blasphemy-related fines have been reported by the media.
