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. In his entry on blasphemy in The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief, Ronald Lindsay writes:
“The core meaning of blasphemy is a legal or moral offense consisting of statements that disparage a deity, the deity’s attributes, or some person or object considered sacred because of close association with a deity (such as Muhammad or the Bible). Those who deny the existence of deities are, therefore, inclined to regard blasphemy as a victimless crime.”
The crime of blasphemy existed long before the emergence of the Abrahamic religions. In ancient Egypt, for example, to gain immortality the deceased had to convince Osiris that he had not blasphemed a god.
The first of the Abrahamic religions to evolve was Judaism and the ancient Jews considered blasphemy a serious offense. Ronald Lindsay writes:
“In Jewish thought, the gravity of blasphemy was connected to the sacred character of God’s name. to invoke God’s name inappropriately was bad enough; to curse God was a horrific act.”
Richard Dawkins, in his book The God Delusion, reports:
“One of the fiercest penalties in the Old Testament is the one exacted for blasphemy.”
Edward Buckner and Michael Buckner, in their book In Freedom We Trust: An Atheist Guide to Religious Liberty, ask:
“Why, from a religious perspective, is blasphemy considered so dangerous that it deserves the ultimate punishment, that it is even the one unforgivable sin according to the New Testament?”
Ronald Lindsay suggests one reason:
“One justification for human punishment of blasphemy is that the blasphemer places his or her community at risk, for example, if the offended deity no longer supports the community that harbors the blasphemer.”
Catastrophes, such as hurricanes, earthquakes, droughts, floods, and tsunamis, have been viewed as the response of vengeful deity who has been insulted by the actions, thoughts, or words of some of the people.
On the other hand, A.C. Grayling, in The God Argument: The Case Against Religion and for Humanism, writes:
“Blasphemy laws, like those relating to obscenity and censorship, are instruments for controlling ideas and the expression of them.”
Historically, the Code of Justinian, enacted in 529 CE, provided the death penalty for blasphemy. Christian theologian Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) viewed blasphemy as a crime greater than murder. Following the Protestant Reformation, Protestants continued to be as likely as Catholics to execute people for blasphemy.
Blasphemy was a crime under English law from 1695 until 1967. When the United States was created, it followed English common law and considered blasphemy a crime. In 1928, Charles Lee Smith, the president of the American Association for the Advancement of Atheism, convicted of blasphemy in Arkansas. He did not serve his sentence and charges were later dropped.
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.”
While in Europe and the United States, blasphemy laws and prosecution under these laws has disappeared, in Islamic countries blasphemy is still considered a major crime and can be punished by death. 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.
In Bangladesh, criticism of religion is not tolerated and writing something that hurts the religious sentiments of others is not acceptable. In Mauritania, blogger Mohamed Cheikh Ould Mkhaitir was sentenced to death in 2014 for writing that the prophet Muhammad had killed Jews but had forgiven the Arabs because they were his blood. In response to this sentence, the International Humanist and Ethical Union called on the Mauritanian government to abolish the crimes of blasphemy and apostasy.
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 of hard labor.
Iceland retained blasphemy laws until 2015 when they were repealed through the efforts of the Pirate Party. The penalty for blasphemy had been a fine or three months in prison.