Nick Cohen, a UK columnist for the Observer and New Statesman, has an article in todays Guardian that is well worth reading … its all about blasphemy laws, and the attempt by Pakistan to inject them into the UN. I suspect you can guess what his views are by just reading the title. Here is an extract …
If the circumstances were not so hideous, the successful attempt by Pakistan to persuade the UN Human Rights Council to condemn blasphemers who defame religion would have been a black comedy. Every word its diplomats used in 2009 to protest against Islamophobia turned out to be a precise description of the prejudices the Pakistani state was appeasing at home.
They told the UN it must approve a universal blasphemy law to protect religious minorities from “intolerance, discrimination and acts of violence”. If they were not the hypocrites they appeared, but honourable men, who wanted to help all minorities and not only Muslims, they must now accept that Salmaan Taseer was butchered for protecting Pakistan’s religious minorities from its own blasphemy law.
And, to you give you a flavor of the rest … here are some more sound bites …
…They told the local cleric she had taken Muhammad’s name in vain. That was enough for the judge to order that she be hanged by the neck until she was dead. …
…Pakistan has become a country so scared of the inciters of religious violence that liberals stay silent for fear the assassins will come for them; a land so benighted Jamaat-e-Islami and other mobster theocrats can get away with blaming Taseer for his own death and treating his killer as a hero for enforcing the will of god…
…Who is meant to be their victim? Are they meant to have injured the feelings of believers, whose faith is so weak mockery and doubt can threaten it? Perhaps they stand accused of assaulting whatever god or gods the faithful follow. In which case, are the deities in question so feeble and thin-skinned they demand that criticism be punished with human sacrifices?…
it has become an act of some courage in the 21st century to make the sensible point that there is no god and we should grow up.
You should read it all, he make some very important points regarding this blasphemy bullshit being inflicted on the world today.