Should blasphemy laws be abolished?

[Lukraak_Sisser]

I do agree, and I feel that blasphemy laws should be outlawed. But how to do so is hard. Accepting refugees from such countries and educating their children so they may be able to change the view in the country of their parents might be the best way to go about it.

We've seen repeatedly in the last decades that invading them and enforcing our morals has a completely opposite effect, as does enforcing economic embargoes. Both cause the population to entrench behind their leaders.

Helping to raise local standards of living should also be effective, but that requires the west to raise their standards at a lower level than we do now, so chances of that occurring I consider low.

 

[Craig4]

I'm fine with keeping blasphemy laws provided that only the entity being blasphemed is allowed to bring suit.

 

[Hlafordlaes]

I do agree, and I feel that blasphemy laws should be outlawed. But how to do so is hard. Accepting refugees from such countries and educating their children so they may be able to change the view in the country of their parents might be the best way to go about it.

We've seen repeatedly in the last decades that invading them and enforcing our morals has a completely opposite effect, as does enforcing economic embargoes. Both cause the population to entrench behind their leaders.

Helping to raise local standards of living should also be effective, but that requires the west to raise their standards at a lower level than we do now, so chances of that occurring I consider low.

The conundrum. I've been advocating in the EU for the view that Muslim immigrants represent the best opportunity for Islam to come to terms with living peacefully in civil society without having a leg up in authority and while exposed to free speech (incl. "blasphemy"). Given, however, the even greater historical and soon contemporary problem with what can only be called militant Christianity -- apart from similar recurring trends in Judaism, Hinduism, and even, OMG, Buddhism -- it is clear that even in the presence of democracy and the rule of law, religionists of an absolutist bent -- "Big Truthers" -- are quite capable of carrying on irrationally in the face of abundant evidence, reasons, and incentives for not doing so, and even when they frontally contradict their own supposed teachings.

Yet, it would seem, the only recourse is to keep on insisting, as well as use the aftermaths of war and conflict to ratchet dialog up a notch. Two steps forward, one step back, in an agonizing slow-mo replay of a major theme in history. I say this as we are now reliving the 1930s, the date now being something like 1939...

I'm fine with keeping blasphemy laws provided that only the entity being blasphemed is allowed to bring suit.

Indeed!

 

[sackett]

Oh yeah?

I'm fine with keeping blasphemy laws provided that only the entity being blasphemed is allowed to bring suit.

Then I AM THE LORD THY GOD, YAY THY VERY GOD, AND THOU SHALT ARREST, DETAIN, PERSECUTE, AND SLAY ALL WHO OFFEND AGAINST ME!

And when God's backed up with goons driving technicals, His case is as good as won.

 

[HansMustermann]

I'm with Hlafordlaes on this one. No truth should be legally beyond questioning. I don't care if it's the Quran or GR or 9/11. Of course, we can still laugh at people questioning GR or for that matter the Quran without a logically sound argument, but it shouldn't be a crime to do so.