Why blasphemy matters

Fred Wooden, the senior pastor of Fountain Street Church, responds:. When a majority religion can suppress or even silence other religious voices, though, all freedom is at risk.

True, ancient texts saw no light between religion and state, and in blasphemy a form of treason. But we do not feel that way today. Sadly, anytime a nation is roiled or anxious, it can combine the power of the state with the appeal of religion and has to impose unity at the expense of liberty and justice.

Therefore, I see no reason that justifies using the law of the land to enforce religious speech and ideas. Note to readers: if you purchase something through one of our affiliate links we may earn a commission.

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The awkward case of 'his or her'. Cultural anthropologist Saba Mahmood says that many devout Muslims perceive blasphemy as an almost physical injury: an intolerable offense that hurts both God himself and the whole community of the faithful. For Mahmood that perception was brought powerfully home in , when a Danish newspaper published cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad.

People she interviewed were very clear on this point:. The punishment is tailored to the enormity of the perceived crime.

That may sound like a foreign concept to secular ears. The reality, though, is that most Western blasphemy laws are rooted in a similar logic of religious offense. But as the West became increasingly secular, religious injury gradually lost much of its power to provoke. By the midth century, most Western blasphemy laws had become virtually dead letters.

Yet looking beyond the American context, one will find that blasphemy laws are hardly obsolete throughout the West.