“The legitimate powers of government, extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” ~T. Jefferson
Nearly 55 years have elapsed since an American was executed for a crime that did not involve murder. However, just yesterday, the Iranian parliament opened debate on a bill mandating the capital punishment for the crime of blogging about apostasy.
This news comes less than two weeks after a story broke in Pakistan about a local man sentenced to death for blasphemy after allegedly defiling the Quran and using derogatory language in a reference to the Prophet Mohammad.
Under Iranian law, rape, armed robbery and apostasy (the leaving of one’s religion) are already punishable by death. However, if this new law passes, the act of using the internet to promote apostasy will also become a capital offense.
In Pakistan, blasphemy convictions are reasonably common despite vehement opposition from Amnesty International and other human rights coalitions.
Pakistan is not the only country to still have blasphemy laws on the books. Austria, Finland, Germany, Iran, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Denmark and Greece all have statutes outlawing behavior disrespectful to the creator, in most country regardless of religion. (None, of course, require the death penalty and rarely enforce these provisions.)
In the United States, while Massachusetts still has an anti-blasphemy clause in its body of general law, the last person to be jailed for the offense was Abner Kneeland in 1833 for stating: “I believe that in the abstract, all is God.” Due to his unconventional interpretation of the deity, Kneeland was accused of being an atheist and was convicted on five counts of blasphemy.
The prosecuting lawyer argued that if Kneeland were not punished, “marriages [will be] dissolved, prostitution made easy and safe, moral and religious restraints removed, property invaded and the foundations of society broken up.”
I’m inclined to believe John Adams got it right in 1825 when he commented on blasphemy laws in a letter to Thomas Jefferson: “I think such laws a great embarrassment, great obstructions to the improvement of the human kind.”
Perhaps Iran and Pakistan have a lesson to learn from Thomas Jefferson.
“The legitimate powers of government,” he said in his Notes on the State of Virginia, “extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”
I, for one, am thankful that the wall of separation between church and state here in America protects my ability to speak freely, to worship freely and to blog freely.
© 1947 - 2008