Oh great, the return of the great push to enact global blasphemy laws. This time it’s not the OIC but a group of Arab countries.
Manama: Arab countries are working on a draft law that bans the defamation of religions and empowers them to take abusers to court even if they are not residents.
The draft, presented by Qatar, is being reviewed by delegates from several Arab countries at the Arab League.
Under its provisions, all forms of defamation, derision or denigration of religions and prophets will be considered crimes.
Is that sweeping enough? Under that wording, anything could be considered a crime – something that doesn’t explicitly mention religion could just be treated as allegory or sarcasm.
Oh and also? Fuck you. Seriously. Religions depend for their survival on everyone just politely not noticing that there is no good reason to believe any god exists or that any humans know what any putative god wants. They’re frauds, in short. If you start making it a crime even to have a laugh at them now and then, the politeness is over. (No, I haven’t been all that polite as it is, but I can get much worse, I promise you.)
“The main feature of the draft is that it gives every state the right to put on trial those who abuse and hold in contempt religions even if they are outside the country,” Ebrahim Mousa Al Hitmi, the Qatari justice ministry assistant undersecretary for legal affairs, said, local Arabic daily Al Arab reported on Wednesday.
Well that will keep people out of your countries, for sure.
The official insisted that the draft law does not clash with freedom of expression.
“The law does not interfere in any way with the freedom of opinion and expression which is well protected and guaranteed. All penal laws in Arab countries criminalise defamation of religions but there are no specific sanctions when an abuser is outside the country. Therefore, the main goal of this law is to deter all forms of defamation of religions and give each country that ratifies it the right to file lawsuits against those who offend religions, even if they are not residents,” he said.
What an imbecile. Deterring all forms of “defamation” of those persistent frauds called religions does interfere with the freedom of opinion and expression, in fact it terminates it. If people aren’t free to question and mock open cheats like religion then they have very little freedom at all.
I wonder if that includes Bill Oreilly now that he has declared himself a prophet.
Since the US Supreme Court has declared atheism as a religion, preaching Islam is denouncing my religion. I wanna sue everyone from the Grand Mullah on down. Popes Frankie and Benny, you’re next.
“. . . it gives every state the right to put on trial those who abuse and hold in contempt religions even if they are outside the country.”
For this alone I defame, denigrate, and deride religions. I gladly abuse and hold in contempt religions. All of them, goddamn it.
There is no planet in the universe on which this crap would NOT BE taken as interference in freedom of speech. Who do these people think they are? And who the hell do they think they are talking to?
As every religion defames every other religion by claiming they aren’t true, does this mean no-one can mention religion ot any religious belief at all?
Under such a law, people could be tried in absentia for any “blasphemy” on the internet, in absentia of common sense. Extremists and religious terrorists aren’t worried about borders, laws and rights in other countries and would be more than happy to “carry out a sentence” on behalf of their cult. And when I say religious terrorists, I’m talking about any religion, not one in particular (i.e. not just Salman Rushdie, but also anti-abortion christian extremism that spread from the US into Canada).
Great, now Sesame is reverberating through my skull for the rest of today:
Manamana. Dut-duu-du-du-dut. Dut-du-dut-duu.
(Hope that isn’t one of the profets’ names.)
But following the link we read:
“The official insisted that the draft law does not clash with freedom of expression.
‘The law does not interfere in any way with the freedom of opinion and expression which is well protected and guaranteed…'”
So that’s all right then.
But seriously. What member state of the Arab League can hope for serious thought among its people on an individual level, so necessary for technical, scientific and economic progress, when all are hobbled by this sort of bullshit?
The Koran itself is defamatory to Christianity and Judaism. The ‘blasphemy’ talk from arab states (yah yah, ISLAMIST states) is completely hypocritical and self-cancelling.
The West could also use the same principle and try members of the Qatari government in absentia for the crime of practising slavery.
There are reports of foreign workers in Qatar and other Gulf States being treated as slaves by their employers.
As numerous Pew surveys have indicated, most Moslems reject the Western idea of liberal democracy, Islam cannot be “accommodated” in democratic societies because of its uncompromising ideology.