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July 6, 2012
Proposed Blasphemy Law in Kurdistan Would Protect Christians As Well As Muslims
Parliamentarians in Iraq's Kurdish region hope to end religious violence by banning insults to what "all religions" have in common: "God, the prophets, holy books."
Parliamentarians in Iraq's Kurdish region are drafting a blasphemy law that, unlike those in other Muslim-majority nations, will protect Christianity as well as Islam from "insult."
Prompted by rioting after a controversial sermon by a Kurdish mullah in May, the bill would make acts of blasphemy –- broadly defined as offending God or the prophets, or deliberately damaging holy books or religious buildings –- against any religion punishable by up to 10 years in prison, according to Rudaw News. Any media organization found guilty of publishing or broadcasting blasphemous content would be closed down for a minimum of six months.
Opponents insist the bill, if passed, will unlawfully censor media in the Kurdistan region. Proponents deny that censorship would become a problem.
“It isn’t prohibiting any freedom. You’re free to say your opinion; you’re free to criticize mullahs, scholars, Islam, the history of Islam," Basher Hadad, head of the committee charged with drafting the bill, told Rudaw News. "What’s not OK and what’s not allowed is insulting Islam.”
Hadad says the law will protect Christians and other religious minorities in addition to Muslims. “The name of Islam is not mentioned in this law. What it does prohibit –- insulting God, the prophets, holy books –- is common to all religions. This law prohibits Muslims from insulting Christians, Yazidi or other religious minorities, too,” he said, according to Rudaw News.
CT has reported how "religicide" has caused Iraqi Christians to flee to Kurdistan, interviewed a missionary who moved to Kurdistan after spending 9/11 in a Taliban jail, and examined how Iraqi Christians were the church's center for a millennium.
Comments
Those of us who follow the persecuted church around the world have seen countless similar promises that Christians will experience supposed equal protection under whatever new "well-meaning" law is enacted [thinking of the promises when sharia was declared in 12 Northern Nigerian states in 1999].
Yet the very tenets of Christianity are inherently 'blasphemous' to Islam and Islam to Christianity. Who will judge such cases? And if/when judgment falls against the majority in favor of the despised minority [Christians according to the very tenets of Islamic law rank at the very bottom of society], mob rule takes over [witness Pakistan as a case in point -- with Pakistani lawyers throwing roses at Shahbaz Bhatti's assassin]. That's the case without fail.
Then there's all the Sunni-Shia bloodshed. How's a ''blasphemy' law to be administered in the face of deep, abiding hatred between factions of Islam?
You point out 'censorship' as the reason against this law. Where's a voice in your story pointing out any well-documented eventualities of supposed equal protection of Christians in Muslim- majority nations?
Ask Carl Moeller of Open Doors USA. Ask Ann Buwalda of Jubilee Campaign USA. Ask Nina Shea of the Hudson Institute. Ask voices of the persecuted themselves who endure threats and risk death every day in Pakistan, Nigeria and beyond simply because they are minority Christians in majority Muslim countries.
CT, you must call a spade a spade. This law will produce bedlam on steroids, and almost all of it will be directed against minority Christians.
Posted By: Deann | July 9, 2012 11:20 AM
Deann is exactly right (and says it very well). It is clear the way blasphemy laws will be used. Whether it is a Christian proclaiming the "blasphemous" belief that God can have a Son or neighbors using the law for less religious personal and business disputes, such as we see in Pakistan, It will be abused. It is direct attack on freedom of speech. I am surprised that CT fell for this double-speak.
Posted By: JP | July 9, 2012 1:54 PM
If Christians have to be "protected" at the expense of (peaceful) free speech for all, then the cost is too high.
Would you advocate similar laws for the US? If so, how would you reconcile such a law with the First Amendment?
JRC
Posted By: James R. Cowles | July 11, 2012 9:06 PM
Blasphemy is really a thought crime. Freedom of Thought and Freedom of Speech, must always rule. Speech and Thought are Human Rights.
Why would these rights be removed? Yet another example of religion giving itself a black-eye.
Posted By: Kelley Smith | July 13, 2012 1:00 PM
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