The New Blasphemies
5th December 2022
“But we don’t have blasphemy sdslaws,” I hear people say when someone protests about some perceived slur on their God or Prophet. Indeed, we do not. Essentially moribund, they were abolished in England in 2008 and in Scotland in 2021. If we did, our prisons would be overflowing with the people who blaspheme against Christianity. Appropriately, British blasphemy laws only ever protected Christianity and, even then, only the Christianity of the established churches. However, the lack of such laws did not protect the right of the public to watch a film of which some Muslims disapproved or a teacher from having to go into hiding with his family for showing a cartoon they did not like. In France, the consequences for upsetting the Islamist mob can be more serious, and even fatal. Islamic extremists require no laws to discourage blasphemy; they simply take the law into their own bloody hands.