I fully support the upcoming International Day of Action to Defend Blasphemers and Apostates, as announced by Maryam Namazie on her FtB site :
Countless individuals face threats, imprisonment, and execution because of their criticism of religion and religious authorities. Blasphemy and Apostasy laws as well as uncodified rules imposed by both state and non-state actors aim primarily to restrict thought and expression and limit the rights of Muslims, ex-Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
Such rules exist in a number of countries including Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Jordan, Morocco, Turkey, Yemen, Iraq and elsewhere.
On 14 March 2012, we, the undersigned, are calling for simultaneous events and actions in defence of the critics of religion in order to highlight medieval laws and exert pressure to save the lives of the women and men facing execution, imprisonment or threats.
I couldn’t agree more, and you should all go and read Maryam’s full post, and familiarize yourself with the names of those highlighted to currently be under threat of death or imprisonment.
But I must take objection to the title of this initiative. It’s not about “defending blasphemers”, this choice of words seems to suggest that there is actually something to the accusation, that someone’s reputation was damaged, that a real person was harmed or offended, by for example sending a lukewarm tweet to the effect that a god might maybe not exist. But this is not the case. Blasphemy and its cousin apostasy are victimless crimes, made-up infringements created by religious zealots who aim to avoid and deflect any criticism, scrutiny or challenge of their untrue claims, their delusions and their established religious bureaucracy.
I think it is important that when we reject the accusation of anyone being guilty of blasphemy or apostasy, we do it for the right reasons. And that is not achieved by arguing technicalities of the claim, but by open and frank rejection of the existence of any basis for the alleged infringement in the first place.
Part of the problem with blasphemy is that those who believe in the Abrahamic religions think that their God really does dish out punishments in the real world when people insult him. God, despite being omniscient, omnipotent and infinitely wise, is incapable of taking out his enemies without inflicting a great deal of collateral damage. Their God’s tendency to punish the innocent as well as the guilty is well documented in their Bible, he is just a hopelessly bad shot.
Back in the real world, of course blasphemy is a victimless crime. In any case, is it not blasphemy to suggest that God is so feeble and powerless that he cannot defend himself against people who point out that he doesn’t exist?
In the UK it is a source of embarrassment that we only abolished our own blasphemy law a couple of years ago. In our defence, our legal system requires that bad laws have to be challenged in order to be changed. The National Secular Society attempted to do this by publicly reading out a poem that had previously been the subject of a blasphemy trial. The powers that be wisely ignored them. Fortunately the Christian idiot Steven Green decided to take the BBC to court for showing Jeremy Springer the Opera, and lost. He got our blasphemy law abolished and bankrupted himself in the process, the Lord does indeed move in mysterious ways.