Blasphemy law

Article 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights obliges countries to adopt legislative measures against "any advocacy of national racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence.

While public insults of a religion are no longer forbidden, speech and actions threatening or demeaning certain groups of people because of their religious beliefs continued to be punishable pursuant to §266(b) of the penal code.

The section is titled "Breach of the sanctity of religion", but the text of the law explicitly includes "publicly blaspheming against God" as well as defaming what is held sacred by a religious community.

Later canonized by the Catholic church as Saint Louis, he became highly committed to his fight against heretics, Jews and Muslims, and set the punishment for blasphemy to mutilation of the tongue and lips.

In response to the Charlie Hebdo attack and with the full support of the Alsatian churches, an October 2016 vote of the French parliament symbolically repealed this long-dormant Alsace-Moselle blasphemy law[51] which was long implicitly unenforceable.

The complainant said that he was not personally offended by the programme but simply believed that the comments made by Fry on RTÉ were criminal blasphemy and that he was doing his civic duty by reporting a crime.

Previously, Irish politicians Mattie McGrath and Keith Redmond stated that hate speech legislation was "secular blasphemy law" in their unsuccessful attempts to oppose it.

[93] Article 147 punished (by up to three months in jail or a fine of the second category (i.e. up to €3,800[94])) anyone who publicly, orally or in writing or depiction, offends religious feelings by scornful blasphemy.

The decision followed a high court ruling in which a man who had put up a poster that read "stop the tumour that is Islam" was found not guilty of insulting a group of people on the grounds of their religion.

The British comedy film Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979) about a fictional Jewish man living at the same time and neighbourhood as Jesus Christ, generated significant international controversy and was banned in several countries including Ireland and Norway.

[108][110] The famous writer and social activist Arnulf Øverland was the last to be tried by this law, in 1933,[111] after giving a speech named "Kristendommen – den tiende landeplage" ("Christianity – the tenth plague"), but was acquitted.

[112] The British comedy film Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979) was briefly banned in Norway by the authorities in early 1980, because it 'was believed to commit the crime of blasphemy by violating people's religious feelings'.

[117] A notable conviction on the basis of this law was that of the pop singer Dorota "Doda" Rabczewska who in 2012 was fined for the amount of 5,000 złotych for saying in an interview that the Bible was written by people 'drunk on wine and smoking some kind of herbs'.

[119] In March 2019, a notable Polish journalist Jerzy Urban was fined 120,000 złotych (around US$30,000) and additional 28,000 PLN of court costs for publishing an image of christ astonished in his newspaper "NIE".

Artist Paul Baraka[127] also received a warning for his works, including an installation in which Jesus is crucified in boxers and wearing deer horns, being worshiped by a group of "zombies" and an oil on canvas painting with elements from the Virgin Mary and the Child icon.

[129] The State Duma investigated "the situation of sacrilegious acts against Church property and proposed amendments to the Russian Penal Code" in their 2012 Autumn Session.

[citation needed] The Union of Orthodox Citizens and MP of United Russia supported the proposal, the latter stating: "We really should make some amendments to the Penal Code in order to cool down these outcasts who have nothing else to do in their lives other than commit such offenses.

[131] According to art.148 of Russian Criminal Code 1 it is declared a federal crime to conduct "public actions clearly defying the society and committed with the express purpose of insulting religious beliefs".

[140] In 2018, following the case of Willy Toledo and three feminist protesters accused of blasphemy, the governing PSOE and supporting party Unidas Podemos pledged an end to the "medieval laws on offending religious sentiments and insult to the Crown".

On 5 March 2008, an amendment was passed to the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 which abolished the common law offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel in England and Wales.

[157] On 24 April 2020, the Scottish Government published a new bill that sought to reform hate crime legislation to provide better protection against race, sex, age and religious discrimination, and also decriminalised blasphemy.

[169] In April 2013, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina rejected calls for new laws from radical Islamist groups, notably Hefajat-e Islam, demanding death penalty for people involved in blasphemy.

[170][171][172] Article 98(f) of the Egyptian Penal Code, as amended by Law 147/2006 states the penalty for blasphemy and similar crimes: Confinement for a period of not less than six months and not exceeding five years, or a fine of not less than five hundred pounds and not exceeding one thousand pounds shall be the penalty inflicted on whoever makes use of religion in propagating, either by words, in writing, or in any other means, extreme ideas for the purpose of inciting strife, ridiculing or insulting a heavenly religion or a sect following it, or damaging national unity.

An infamous 2010 case, in which these were employed to attempt a prosecution, was that of Waleed Al-Husseini, a young man from the West Bank town of Qalqilya who had left Islam to become an atheist, and openly challenged and ridiculed religion online.

The article, which is in the fifth section of the Turkish Penal Code ("Offenses Against Public Peace") is as follows:[204] On 1 June 2012, pianist Fazıl Say came under investigation by the Istanbul Prosecutor's Office over statements made on Twitter, declaring himself an atheist and retweeting a message poking fun at the Islamic conception of paradise.

According to the article, the following offences if perpetrated publicly shall be a subject to a jail sentence for a minimum period of one year or a fine:[209] Accusations of blasphemy in Yemen are often aimed at religious minorities, intellectuals and artists, reporters, human rights defenders, and opponents of the ruling party.

[226][227] Blasphemy is covered by Articles 170 and 173 of the penal code as enacted by the British Mandate:[228][229] The law is rarely enforced due to concerns of infringing civil liberties.

Section 295A was added to the Penal code by a legislative amendment in 1927, in the aftermath of Rangeela Rasool incident where a Muslim fatally stabbed a Hindu editor after he was acquitted by the then existing law.

[247] In June 2015, writer and former National League for Democracy information officer, Htin Lin Oo was sentenced to two years of hard labour for violating section 295A.

As of March 2009[update], it was forbidden in Andorra, Cyprus, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Spain, Finland, Germany, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, Norway, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, the Russian Federation, Slovakia, Switzerland, Turkey and Ukraine.