Dermot Ahern wants to make me a criminal
This morning’s cup of what the fuck? comes courtesy of the Irish Times:
A NEW crime of blasphemous libel is to be proposed by the Minister for Justice in an amendment to the Defamation Bill, which will be discussed by the Oireachtas committee on justice today.
Because with the economy in the shitter, thousands unemployed and gangsters murdering each other in the street, what we really need to be worrying about is offending imaginary magic men.
Despite the fact that our Supreme Court has stated that it was impossible to say “of what the offence of blasphemy consists”, our whackaloon Minister for Justice wants to make saying naughty things about god a criminal offence:
Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern proposes to insert a new section into the Defamation Bill, stating: “A person who publishes or utters blasphemous matter shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable upon conviction on indictment to a fine not exceeding €100,000.”
“Blasphemous matter” is defined as matter “that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion; and he or she intends, by the publication of the matter concerned, to cause such outrage.”
Now presumably Ahern or the civil servant who’s earning Opus Dei air miles by slipping this amendment into the bill has the Catholic religion and the Christian god in mind. But under the provision – Salman Rushdie would be a criminal for writing the Satanic Verses and it would have been illegal for the Danish cartoonists to draw and publish their pictures of Mohammed. Even the Life of Brian could be considered as being illegal under that wording.
And not only that, if you’ve got a copy of the Life of Brian on your shelf, the Gardai could get a warrant to enter your house and seize it.
Where a person is convicted of an offence under this section, the court may issue a warrant authorising the Garda Síochána to enter, if necessary using reasonable force, a premises where the member of the force has reasonable grounds for believing there are copies of the blasphemous statements in order to seize them.
This amendment is a licence for religious whackos – who are notoriously prone to taking offence – to harass and limit the free speech of anyone not showing enough deference to their imaginary friends. Imagine how a dangerous cult like the Church of Scientology could wield this law like a cosh to silence its critics.
It’s also a licence to silence and criminalise atheists – whose very existence is blasphemous by the standards of many faiths. For example – here is how the Catholic Encyclopaedia defines blasphemy:
Blasphemy (Greek blaptein, “to injure”, and pheme, “reputation”) signifies etymologically gross irreverence towards any person or thing worthy of exalted esteem…It is to be noted that according to the definition (1) blasphemy is set down as a word, for ordinarily it is expressed in speech, though it may be committed in thought or in act….Blasphemy, by reason of the significance of the words with which it is expressed, may be of three kinds.
1. It is heretical when the insult to God involves a declaration that is against faith, as in the assertion: “God is cruel and unjust” or “The noblest work of man is God”.
2. It is imprecatory when it would cry a malediction upon the Supreme Being as when one would say: “Away with God”.
3. It is simply contumacious when it is wholly made up of contempt of, or indignation towards, God, as in the blasphemy of Julian the Apostate: “Thou has conquered, O Galilaean”…Blasphemy is a sin against the virtue of religion by which we render to God the honour due to Him as our first beginning and last end.
(Emphasis mine – in typically authoritarian style, blasphemy is a thought crime in Catholicism!)
I’m pretty sure that the writings of the likes of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens or PZ Myers fall under that definition, not to mention quite a bit of what I write here (not that I would draw any other comparison between myself and those worthies).
Of course, the way to prove the absurdity of this law would be to use it to charge one religion as being blasphemous of another. After all, Islam claims that there is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet. This is clearly blasphemous for Christians and Jews.
Equally, Christianity claims that those who do not accept Jesus Christ as the Son of God and their saviour are condemned to eternal torment in hell. This is clearly blasphemous in Judaism and Islam. Hindus don’t even recognise Yahweh or Jesus or Mohammed as being sacred at all, what with their “blasphemous” worship of Shiva, Brahma and Vishnu amongst other gods.
The whole idea of libelling – that is, making a false and damaging statement about – a god is patent nonsense. To make a false statement about a god, you have to prove that the god truly exists. You can’t just take it on faith that he/she/it exists and is offended by a statement when the punishment is decidedly real. You may as well make defaming Harry Potter, Peter Pan or Santa Claus a criminal offence.
But Ireland being a liberal democracy, there’s surely a howl of outrage from the opposition, right?
Not so much:
Labour spokesman on justice Pat Rabbitte is proposing an amendment to this section which would reduce the maximum fine to €1,000 and exclude from the definition of blasphemy any matter that had any literary, artistic, social or academic merit.
So it’s only blasphemy if it not only offends god, but good taste. Which misses the point entirely. It is absurd for offence against god to be a crime under secular law. Full stop. End of story. No amount of lipstick will change the fact that this proposed law is a pig.
If anyone’s interested in writing to Dermot Ahern or Pat Rabbitte to (politely) tell them what you think of their respective amendments, their contact details are here and here.
Update: Twenty Major responds as only he can.
Update II: Further coverage by Future Taoiseach at Irish Election.
April 29th, 2009 at 10:20 am
One would hope that this ill-considered piece of legislative thuggery would die when the first cogent arguments against it are raised. Sadly, such is the poor regard in which our current political classes are held, that hoping for any such argument seems pointless. I’ll be getting directly on to Dermot and Pat and giving them a piece of my mind. Politely, of course.
April 29th, 2009 at 11:38 am
Labour’s amendment misses the point.
Better if they’d announced a proposal to delete the constitutional provision on blasphemy, to run on the same day as the Lisbon vote.
And for that matter, what are we doing making sedition a constitutional offence? Sedition is “illegal action inciting resistance to lawful authority and tending to cause the disruption or overthrow of the government.”
Like what, hanging paintings of Cowen in the national gallery?
May 1st, 2009 at 12:07 am
I think this bill is going to do more damage than previously thought.
Evolutionary biologists (of which there are quite a number in this country) could be sued and their research discontinued just because some religious nut doesn’t want to hear the facts. We publish a lot of papers in science every year, and a lot of it flies in the face of all religious belief to some degree, though not because we meant it to, it’s just that facts are facts and religion is… not so much facts.
And how is this going to affect any introduction of Gay Rights/Marriage legislation?! What the heck?!
May 6th, 2009 at 4:04 am
IS it possible that the blasphemy part of this proposed law is there to divert attention away from the sedition part?
i mean come on this is the 21st Century. religion is all but dead in Ireland. NOBODY cares about blasphemy these days. ESPECIALLY not the politicians. there is no motivation to bring in a blasphemy law. especially no NOW. Sedition on the other hand is slightly more relevant in a country where society is becomming unstuck, people are losing their houses and the rule of the dominant political party will be gone for as long as this current generation remembers the damage caused by the celtic tiger.
i mean if the stupid blasphemy law was the problem they could easily either drop it from the constitution or set a maximum penalty of a EUR1.00 fine. i mean saying you are setting the max penalty at EUR100,000 so that the high court will hear the case is retarded. if you set the fine at EUR1.00 there is NO INCENTIVE to try to get somebody charged with this ‘crime’.
just a thought.
May 7th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
Cian said “NOBODY cares about blasphemy these days. ESPECIALLY not the politicians”
Did you think our politicians were stupid? The weird manoeuvring of many of them (eg Hannafin, Ahearn, Woods, O’Hanlon etc. etc.)can only be understood when you consider their pervy, intolerant (and extermely undemocratic!!) Catholic allegiances.
We (the Irish public) need to wake up to this GROWING phenomenon – if – we want to live in a free and maturing democracy.