Blasphemy laws No death penalty in US, Europe
December 09, 2010
LAHORE: While the blasphemy laws covering sheer disrespect towards religious beliefs either stand completely abolished in various countries following the teachings of Jesus Christ or they only exist in a state of dormancy. Research reveals that casting aspersions on the Creator and the Church was once a crime punishable by death in these nations, as it is the case today in Muslim countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia.
After having ardently supported the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) campaign to create global laws against blasphemy and having vouched for it at the United Nations in November 2008, rumours are already round that the rulers in Islamabad may succumb to the mounting pressure from the West and rotate around their somersault axis in near future to soften up the laws punishing religious profanity.
At a time when the Lahore High Court has been assured by the Pakistan People’s Party government that it has no intention to reform the Blasphemy Law, former Information Minister Sherry Rahman is already weighing her wings to table a bill in the National Assembly in a bid to get this law amended.
A quick review of the blasphemy laws worldwide shows that in the United States, the concept of punishing people for blasphemy or irreverence of religious beliefs is deemed against the First Amendment of the Constitution which bars Congress from abridging the freedom of speech.
The US Supreme Court in its decision in the famous “Joseph Burstyn Incorporated versus Wilson” Case of 1952, which also marked the decline of motion picture censorship in the country, had observed that the then American government’s decision to block the screening of a movie “The Miracle” was actually a restraint on freedom of speech and thereby a violation of the First Constitutional Amendment.
This Supreme Court verdict has actually gone a long way in burying the concept of blasphemy in US under heaps of mud for good.
The movie (The Miracle) had actually ignited widespread moral outrage in various European capitals like Paris, where protestors had found it blasphemous.
After its American release, protests had again sparked up and the film’s license was eventually cancelled in 1951 by the authorities.
The case was invoked to the Supreme Court by the film’s distributor Joseph Burstyn, after he was declined the license to screen the movie in American cinema.
However, history shows that the US once had many penal statutes against blasphemy, which were not considered subversive of the liberty of the press. Profanity against Jesus was punishable under the Common Law and the defendants found culpable by the court were sentenced to imprisonment for three months and even had to pay a fine of $500 for profane cursing.
Although “hate speech” is not a crime in the US, cases can be registered if the intent of religious intolerance is proved in court on racial or religious grounds.
According to the 2009 United States Sentencing Guidelines, it is a distinct felony to victimize people on such grounds.
The blasphemous libel in England and Wales was eliminated in July 2008 during former Premier Gordon Brown’s regime after the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 had abolished the common law offences related to religious irreverence.
According to the BBC Online Edition of October 18, 2004, the last imprisonment that was awarded in UK under blasphemy was recorded in 1921, when a man called John William Gott was sentenced for nine months for publishing brochures which had mocked a Biblical story concerning Jesus Christ.
British legal history, however, tells that the last known execution for this crime was recorded in 1697 when a teen-ager Thomas Aikenhead was hanged on orders of a Scottish court.
However, on July 8, 2008, the British Government consulted the Church of England and abandoned the Blasphemy Law.
But even before the Blasphemy Law was abolished in the UK, the House of Lords had refused to charge author Salman Rushdie for writing a blasphemous novel “The Satanic Verses” in 1988, despite intense pressure from the Muslims all over the world to prosecute the man.
Interestingly, the House of Lords had asserted that the law only protected the Christian beliefs as held by the Church of England. We all remember that Iranian clerical leader Ayatollah Khomeini had issued a decree in 1989, calling for Rushdie’s death
Similarly, when the BBC had decided to broadcast a stage show “Jerry Springer: The Opera” in January 2005, thousands of Christians had felt offended by Jesus being portrayed wrongly in it.
The Court was moved, but the judges ruled that the common law on blasphemy offences specifically did not apply to stage productions.
The last prosecution for blasphemy in Scotland was registered in 1843.
In Ireland, its Justice Minister had announced on March 14 this year that his country would hold a referendum on removing a blasphemy ban from the constitution.
According to “The Guardian,” Ireland had introduced a legislation at the beginning of the year, whereby making blasphemy a crime punishable with a fine of up to 25,000 Euros, despite the fact that the Irish Supreme Court had found the law against blasphemy to be unenforceable in 1999.
Among the Muslim nations with Islam as their state religion, the punishment for this crime in Jordan is relatively lenient as compared to other countries as blasphemers are liable for imprisonment of up to three years and a fine only.
In Indonesia, where contempt against religion is covered by Article 156(a) of the Indonesia’s Criminal Code, the maximum penalty for this offence is a five-year imprisonment.
In Sudan, under Section 125 of the Sudanese Criminal Act, a punishment of a maximum of 40 lashes can be awarded for insulting religion and inciting hatred. Blasphemers can also be imprisoned for at least six months and subjected to heavy fines.
The United Arab Emirates discourage blasphemy by using Sharia punishments against Muslims and by using judge-made penalties against the people found guilty under this crime.
In Malaysia, under Articles 295-298A of the country’s Penal Code, penalties for those who commit offences against religion may range from up to three years in prison or a fine of up to US $1,000.
Blasphemy in Judaism was also punishable by death during the times of Prophets Noah and Moses.
The list of capital crimes in the Holy Book of Torah also reveals that blasphemy was punishable by death at that time.
During the Medieval times, as the Catholic Encyclopaedia states, blasphemers were punished severely. By a decree of the 13th century, people convicted of blasphemy were compelled to stand at the door of the church during the solemnities of the Mass for seven Sundays.
On the seventh Sunday, the blasphemers were made to appear in public with ropes around their necks and without their cloaks and shoes.
Men accused of airing derogatory remarks against religion were made to fast and were under an obligation to give alms.
In the 17th century, blasphemy was declared a common law offence by the Court of King’s Bench, punishable by the common law courts.
From the 16th century to the mid-19th century, blasphemy against Christianity was recognized as an offence against common law and was punishable by the temporal courts with death, imprisonment, heavy fines and corporal punishment.
The Catholic Encyclopedia further states that blasphemy has been condemned as a cardinal sin by the Church theologians.
Going to the Pacific Rim, one finds that laws pertaining to blasphemy do exist on paper in some Australian states, but they are not effective for practical purposes and only a nominal recourse is granted to those who are offended by outrageous acts committed against their religious values.
The lenient nature of blasphemy-related laws in Australia can be gauged from the fact that the last attempted prosecution for religious impudence by the Crown had occurred in the state of Victoria over 91 years ago.
In New Zealand, Section 123 of the Crimes Act 1961 allows for imprisonment up to one year for anyone who publishes any “blasphemous libel.”
The only person prosecuted for blasphemous libel in New Zealand was a newspaper publisher by the name of John Glover in 1922.
In the South American nation of Brazil, blasphemy is a crime punishable with one month to one year of incarceration or fine.
In Canada, the Criminal Code does recognize blasphemous libel as a crime, but since 1935, nobody has ever been prosecuted on charges of religious insult.
Like any other country of the world, the Criminal Code of Canada prohibits hate speech that targets any religious group with a motive to ridicule its beliefs.
In Denmark, the last time the Blasphemy Laws were used against any person or group was in 1938 when a Nazi group was convicted for religious rudeness.
Although abolition of the Blasphemy clause was proposed in Denmark in 2004, it had failed to gain a majority. It has been discussed since; especially after the notorious Danish newspaper “Jyllands-Posten” had published blasphemous cartoons of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH).
In Finland, Chapter 17 of the Criminal Code relates to blasphemy.
In May 2008, a man was sentenced to 28 months in prison on charges of casting aspersions against Islam.
As far as the general European initiatives for abolition of Blasphemy Laws is concerned, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe had adopted a proposal in 2007 that blasphemy should not be treated a criminal offence.
In October 2008, the Venice Commission had issued a report on this subject, which had noted that the offence of blasphemy should be abolished.
In Germany, blasphemy is covered by Article 166 of the German Criminal Law. In 2006, a person was prosecuted for blasphemy.
In Greece, Articles 198, 199, and 201 of the Greek Penal Code create offences which involve blasphemy and those found guilty can be put behind the bars for a period ranging between three months and two years.
In Netherlands, blasphemy is prohibited under Article 147 of the Penal Code and blasphemers can be jailed up to three months or they can be required to pay a fine up to 3,800 Euros.
The last successful conviction under Article 147 took place in the early 1960s when a newspaper publisher was fined 100 guilders.
In India, although the concept of blasphemy is absent in Hindu religion, Section 295A of the Indian Penal Code covers hate speech and prescribes punishments for hurting anybody’s religious feelings.
As far as Pakistan is concerned, in October 1990, the country’s Federal Shariat Court had ruled that it was repugnant to Islam to permit life imprisonment as an alternative to a death sentence in cases pertaining to blasphemy under Section 295-C of the Pakistan Criminal Code, whereby holding strongly that the penalty for contempt of the Holy Prophet was none other than death.
Shortly after this ruling, Bishop Dani Tasleem had opted to file an appeal in the Supreme Court of Pakistan, which has the power to override the Federal Shariat Court decision.
On April 21, 2009, the Supreme Court rejected the appeal, ruling that the death penalty was the only punishment that Islamic law provided for blasphemy.
The decision was given by the Apex Court’s Shariat Appellate Bench comprising Justice Javed Buttar, Justice Farrukh Mahmud, Justice Shahid Siddiqui, Justice Dr Allama Khalid Mehmood and Justice Dr Rashid Ahmed Jullundhri.
After having ardently supported the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) campaign to create global laws against blasphemy and having vouched for it at the United Nations in November 2008, rumours are already round that the rulers in Islamabad may succumb to the mounting pressure from the West and rotate around their somersault axis in near future to soften up the laws punishing religious profanity.
At a time when the Lahore High Court has been assured by the Pakistan People’s Party government that it has no intention to reform the Blasphemy Law, former Information Minister Sherry Rahman is already weighing her wings to table a bill in the National Assembly in a bid to get this law amended.
A quick review of the blasphemy laws worldwide shows that in the United States, the concept of punishing people for blasphemy or irreverence of religious beliefs is deemed against the First Amendment of the Constitution which bars Congress from abridging the freedom of speech.
The US Supreme Court in its decision in the famous “Joseph Burstyn Incorporated versus Wilson” Case of 1952, which also marked the decline of motion picture censorship in the country, had observed that the then American government’s decision to block the screening of a movie “The Miracle” was actually a restraint on freedom of speech and thereby a violation of the First Constitutional Amendment.
This Supreme Court verdict has actually gone a long way in burying the concept of blasphemy in US under heaps of mud for good.
The movie (The Miracle) had actually ignited widespread moral outrage in various European capitals like Paris, where protestors had found it blasphemous.
After its American release, protests had again sparked up and the film’s license was eventually cancelled in 1951 by the authorities.
The case was invoked to the Supreme Court by the film’s distributor Joseph Burstyn, after he was declined the license to screen the movie in American cinema.
However, history shows that the US once had many penal statutes against blasphemy, which were not considered subversive of the liberty of the press. Profanity against Jesus was punishable under the Common Law and the defendants found culpable by the court were sentenced to imprisonment for three months and even had to pay a fine of $500 for profane cursing.
Although “hate speech” is not a crime in the US, cases can be registered if the intent of religious intolerance is proved in court on racial or religious grounds.
According to the 2009 United States Sentencing Guidelines, it is a distinct felony to victimize people on such grounds.
The blasphemous libel in England and Wales was eliminated in July 2008 during former Premier Gordon Brown’s regime after the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 had abolished the common law offences related to religious irreverence.
According to the BBC Online Edition of October 18, 2004, the last imprisonment that was awarded in UK under blasphemy was recorded in 1921, when a man called John William Gott was sentenced for nine months for publishing brochures which had mocked a Biblical story concerning Jesus Christ.
British legal history, however, tells that the last known execution for this crime was recorded in 1697 when a teen-ager Thomas Aikenhead was hanged on orders of a Scottish court.
However, on July 8, 2008, the British Government consulted the Church of England and abandoned the Blasphemy Law.
But even before the Blasphemy Law was abolished in the UK, the House of Lords had refused to charge author Salman Rushdie for writing a blasphemous novel “The Satanic Verses” in 1988, despite intense pressure from the Muslims all over the world to prosecute the man.
Interestingly, the House of Lords had asserted that the law only protected the Christian beliefs as held by the Church of England. We all remember that Iranian clerical leader Ayatollah Khomeini had issued a decree in 1989, calling for Rushdie’s death
Similarly, when the BBC had decided to broadcast a stage show “Jerry Springer: The Opera” in January 2005, thousands of Christians had felt offended by Jesus being portrayed wrongly in it.
The Court was moved, but the judges ruled that the common law on blasphemy offences specifically did not apply to stage productions.
The last prosecution for blasphemy in Scotland was registered in 1843.
In Ireland, its Justice Minister had announced on March 14 this year that his country would hold a referendum on removing a blasphemy ban from the constitution.
According to “The Guardian,” Ireland had introduced a legislation at the beginning of the year, whereby making blasphemy a crime punishable with a fine of up to 25,000 Euros, despite the fact that the Irish Supreme Court had found the law against blasphemy to be unenforceable in 1999.
Among the Muslim nations with Islam as their state religion, the punishment for this crime in Jordan is relatively lenient as compared to other countries as blasphemers are liable for imprisonment of up to three years and a fine only.
In Indonesia, where contempt against religion is covered by Article 156(a) of the Indonesia’s Criminal Code, the maximum penalty for this offence is a five-year imprisonment.
In Sudan, under Section 125 of the Sudanese Criminal Act, a punishment of a maximum of 40 lashes can be awarded for insulting religion and inciting hatred. Blasphemers can also be imprisoned for at least six months and subjected to heavy fines.
The United Arab Emirates discourage blasphemy by using Sharia punishments against Muslims and by using judge-made penalties against the people found guilty under this crime.
In Malaysia, under Articles 295-298A of the country’s Penal Code, penalties for those who commit offences against religion may range from up to three years in prison or a fine of up to US $1,000.
Blasphemy in Judaism was also punishable by death during the times of Prophets Noah and Moses.
The list of capital crimes in the Holy Book of Torah also reveals that blasphemy was punishable by death at that time.
During the Medieval times, as the Catholic Encyclopaedia states, blasphemers were punished severely. By a decree of the 13th century, people convicted of blasphemy were compelled to stand at the door of the church during the solemnities of the Mass for seven Sundays.
On the seventh Sunday, the blasphemers were made to appear in public with ropes around their necks and without their cloaks and shoes.
Men accused of airing derogatory remarks against religion were made to fast and were under an obligation to give alms.
In the 17th century, blasphemy was declared a common law offence by the Court of King’s Bench, punishable by the common law courts.
From the 16th century to the mid-19th century, blasphemy against Christianity was recognized as an offence against common law and was punishable by the temporal courts with death, imprisonment, heavy fines and corporal punishment.
The Catholic Encyclopedia further states that blasphemy has been condemned as a cardinal sin by the Church theologians.
Going to the Pacific Rim, one finds that laws pertaining to blasphemy do exist on paper in some Australian states, but they are not effective for practical purposes and only a nominal recourse is granted to those who are offended by outrageous acts committed against their religious values.
The lenient nature of blasphemy-related laws in Australia can be gauged from the fact that the last attempted prosecution for religious impudence by the Crown had occurred in the state of Victoria over 91 years ago.
In New Zealand, Section 123 of the Crimes Act 1961 allows for imprisonment up to one year for anyone who publishes any “blasphemous libel.”
The only person prosecuted for blasphemous libel in New Zealand was a newspaper publisher by the name of John Glover in 1922.
In the South American nation of Brazil, blasphemy is a crime punishable with one month to one year of incarceration or fine.
In Canada, the Criminal Code does recognize blasphemous libel as a crime, but since 1935, nobody has ever been prosecuted on charges of religious insult.
Like any other country of the world, the Criminal Code of Canada prohibits hate speech that targets any religious group with a motive to ridicule its beliefs.
In Denmark, the last time the Blasphemy Laws were used against any person or group was in 1938 when a Nazi group was convicted for religious rudeness.
Although abolition of the Blasphemy clause was proposed in Denmark in 2004, it had failed to gain a majority. It has been discussed since; especially after the notorious Danish newspaper “Jyllands-Posten” had published blasphemous cartoons of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH).
In Finland, Chapter 17 of the Criminal Code relates to blasphemy.
In May 2008, a man was sentenced to 28 months in prison on charges of casting aspersions against Islam.
As far as the general European initiatives for abolition of Blasphemy Laws is concerned, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe had adopted a proposal in 2007 that blasphemy should not be treated a criminal offence.
In October 2008, the Venice Commission had issued a report on this subject, which had noted that the offence of blasphemy should be abolished.
In Germany, blasphemy is covered by Article 166 of the German Criminal Law. In 2006, a person was prosecuted for blasphemy.
In Greece, Articles 198, 199, and 201 of the Greek Penal Code create offences which involve blasphemy and those found guilty can be put behind the bars for a period ranging between three months and two years.
In Netherlands, blasphemy is prohibited under Article 147 of the Penal Code and blasphemers can be jailed up to three months or they can be required to pay a fine up to 3,800 Euros.
The last successful conviction under Article 147 took place in the early 1960s when a newspaper publisher was fined 100 guilders.
In India, although the concept of blasphemy is absent in Hindu religion, Section 295A of the Indian Penal Code covers hate speech and prescribes punishments for hurting anybody’s religious feelings.
As far as Pakistan is concerned, in October 1990, the country’s Federal Shariat Court had ruled that it was repugnant to Islam to permit life imprisonment as an alternative to a death sentence in cases pertaining to blasphemy under Section 295-C of the Pakistan Criminal Code, whereby holding strongly that the penalty for contempt of the Holy Prophet was none other than death.
Shortly after this ruling, Bishop Dani Tasleem had opted to file an appeal in the Supreme Court of Pakistan, which has the power to override the Federal Shariat Court decision.
On April 21, 2009, the Supreme Court rejected the appeal, ruling that the death penalty was the only punishment that Islamic law provided for blasphemy.
The decision was given by the Apex Court’s Shariat Appellate Bench comprising Justice Javed Buttar, Justice Farrukh Mahmud, Justice Shahid Siddiqui, Justice Dr Allama Khalid Mehmood and Justice Dr Rashid Ahmed Jullundhri.
