09 January 2011

Only religious thugs love blasphemy laws

.... instead of acknowledging our fear we dress up our refusal to speak plainly in woozy therapeutic language. We talk of our "respect" for diversity and our determination to protect "the other" and fail to notice that we are abandoning "the other's" victims and aiding and abetting their enemies. Islamists threatened Ahmadis in Surrey, but the story passed virtually without comment in the British press.

When Ireland published a law that said it was a crime to "outrage a substantial number of the adherents of [a] religion", the Organisation of Islamic Countries took up Dublin's dangerously vague definition to help in the oppression of their own people's freedom of thought. And it is not only brave politicians and intellectuals such as Taseer and Rushdie who suffer. [Guardian Cif] Read more