For many religions which are based on the assumption that their belief system is not only the Truth, but the Only Truth, this Truth cannot be questioned or challenged. As a result, these religions, such as Christianity and Islam, are faced with problems of heresy, blasphemy, and apostasy.
Heresy:
The English word “heresy” has an interesting history. The ancient Greek verb “hairein” meant “to take” and from this verb came the adjective “hairetos” meaning “able to choose” and the noun “hairesis” meaning “the act of choosing.” Over time the noun “hairesis” also acquired the meanings: “a choice;” “a course of action;” “a school of thought;” and “a philosophical or religious sect.”
Our modern English “heresy” stems from the use of “hairesis” in Judaism which simply referred to a religious faction, party, or sect. In this sense, the word was neutral and non-pejorative. Often the Greek “hairesis” in the New Testament of the Christian Bible is translated as “sect.”
The pejorative sense of “heresy” came about with St. Paul who used it to refer to a splinter group within the Christian community that threatened the unity of his Church. In other words, those who disagreed with him were heretics. Some of today’s philosophers have pointed out that St. Paul made the dogmatic acceptance of his interpretations more important to religious practice than living a socially moral life.
Today the Catechism of the Catholic Church declares that:
“Heresy is the obstinate post-baptismal denial of some truth which must be believed with divine and catholic faith.”
The Catholic Church vigorously suppressed heresy during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and in 1231 Pope Gregory IX established the Inquisition, an ecclesiastical tribunal charged with combating heresy.
Blasphemy:
The etymology of “blasphemy” and “blaspheme” are fairly straight forward: the Middle English “blasfemen” was borrowed from the Late Latin “blasphemare” which in turn was borrowed from the Greek “blasphēmein” meaning “to speak ill of.” Today, blasphemy laws prohibit “hostility” to certain religions, religious beliefs, and/or religious believers. The concept of “hostility” may include any expressions which are critical or questioning of some aspect of religion.
Richard Dawkins, in his book The God Delusion, reports:
“One of the fiercest penalties in the Old Testament is the one exacted for blasphemy.”
In 2009, the Center for Inquiry helped to establish what would become International Blasphemy Rights Day. Ronald Lindsay, writing in
Free Inquiry, reports:
“Freedom of political speech is still restricted in many countries with authoritarian governments, but criticism of religion is even more widely restricted, being prohibited under some circumstances even in countries that have democratic governments, including Greece, Germany, and Canada.”
Also writing in
Free Inquiry, Elizabeth Cassidy, the deputy director of Policy and Research at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, reports:
“More than fifty countries around the world still have criminal blasphemy laws, though some of them use them more than others. These laws usually are discriminatory on their face, protecting only one or some religions.”
Robert Lindsay also writes:
“Those who favor the punishment of expression critical of religious beliefs will sometimes refer to the right of believers not to be offended. But there is no such right.”
Pakistan’s blasphemy law is the most severe and the most frequently applied. This law calls for the death penalty for blaspheming the name of the prophet Muhammad and for life imprisonment for desecrating the Qur’an. In 2001, for example, Dr. Younis Shaikh was sentenced to death in Pakistan for telling students that Muhammad was not a Muslim before he invented the religion at the age of forty.
Lest we think that blasphemy laws are only used in Islamic countries, when John William Gott compared Jesus to a clown in Britain in 1922, he was sentenced to nine months hard labor.
Apostasy:
The word “apostasy” came into English in the late fourteenth century with the meaning of “renunciation, abandonment or neglect of established religion.” The word’s origins are found in the Latin “apostasia” which is from the Greek “apostasia” meaning “revolt, defection.”
While the religions that actively promote themselves as having exclusive Truth seek converts from other religions, the idea that when a person has been exposed to this Truth should somehow abandon it is seen as unthinkable, perhaps even an indication of insanity. The act of converting from one religion to another requires apostasy. For some religions, the required penalty for apostasy is death.
In Islam, a Muslim is a member of a community of believers whose duty is obedience and submission to the will of God. For a Muslim to reject Islam in word or deed is viewed as a form of desertion and betrayal of the community. Apostasy, from this perspective, is a form of treason. In some forms of Islam, if a male apostate is judged to be sane, he must be executed. The Qur’an states that Allah despises apostasy.
Today the Catechism of the Catholic Church declares that:
“apostasy is the total repudiation of the Christian faith.”
In the Spanish conquest of the Americas, Native peoples only had to be exposed to the words of the Truth, not necessarily understand them, and if they failed to submit, then they were apostates and a just war could be waged against them. Upon contacting an Indian village, Indian writer Vine Deloria, in his afterword to
America in 1492: The World of Indian Peoples Before the Arrival of Columbus, writes that the Spanish conquistadores
“would read a document known as the ‘Requirement,’ which recited the history of the world as they knew it, from the Garden of Eden to the recent discovery, and demanded that the natives accept this fable as true and submit themselves to the Spanish Crown and the Catholic Church.”
It did not make any difference that the natives might not understand Spanish or Latin, or that they might have their own history of the world. Once the word of the Spanish god was revealed, a just war could be waged on those who rejected it.