American Blasphemy

The New York Times takes a bold stance, condemning the criminalization of blasphemy. The impetus for this striking position is the treatment of Asia Bibi by Pakistan.

It is good news that Pakistan’s Supreme Court has acquitted and freed a Pakistani Christian woman who had already spent eight years on death row for blasphemy. In a 56-page ruling, the three justices said Asia Bibi, a farmworker in her early 50s, was the victim of mob justice aroused by unsubstantiated claims of what she said about the Prophet Muhammad in an exchange with women angry that she had sipped water from a cup used by Muslims.

Though the trial was a farce, overturning it took courage. In 2011, the governor of Punjab Province, Salman Taseer, who had campaigned for Ms. Bibi’s release and for changes in the blasphemy laws, was shot and killed by his bodyguard. Two months later, the minister of minorities, the sole Christian in the Pakistani government, who had also called for the changes, was killed. The announcement of the Supreme Court ruling on Oct. 31 set off protests across Pakistan and a warning from Islamist firebrands that the justices were risking death. Ms. Bibi has been in hiding since her release and may have to flee Pakistan.

By this point, you should well see the parallels, even if the New York Times doesn’t. 

But this is not a story about the triumph of tolerance over antiquated law. Ms. Bibi was freed not because the court found that the blasphemy law violated her rights or was in any other way inherently wrong, but because the trial was flawed.

They nailed it, and yet don’t demonstrate the slightest grasp of what it is they nailed. Swap out insulted the Prophet Muhammad for used language that hurt the feelings, oops, traumatized a marginalized and oppressed identity group and the exact same rhetoric fits pretty well to Pakistan on the Potomac.

Religion is faith in a belief, and whether it’s a particular deity or an ideology makes little difference to its believers. Their blind faith and willingness to defend the unseen, the irrational, their belief, no matter what the cost, is the distinguishing characteristic. They have laws against insulting the Prophet Muhammad. We have laws against “hate crimes.” People want there to be laws against “hate speech,” and until there is, there are mobs of outraged people enforcing their outrage by virulent attack against the blasphemer.

According to the Pew Research Center, about a quarter of all countries had anti-blasphemy laws or policies as of 2014, and more than a tenth have laws or policies against apostasy, or renouncing a religious belief.

How many college students believe “hate speech” shouldn’t be protected by the First Amendment? How many believe it should be a crime to use “hate speech”? How many believe they would be justified in punching someone who used “hate speech”? Pakistan on the Charles.

What saved Bibi wasn’t that the mob came to its senses. Mobs don’t come to their senses because they have none, whipped into a frenzy by a perceived violation of their faith and, once set in motion, mindless and dangerous. The thing that saved Bibi, to the extent one can call her saved, was the law.

Sacrilege is painful to religious believers everywhere. But broad and subjective legal proscriptions not only contradict the fundamental right to freedom of expression; they also open the door to persecution of minority faiths, as in Ms. Bibi’s case, or of political dissidents.

Hate speech is painful to social justice believers everywhere. But broad and subjective social proscriptions contradict the fundamental right to freedom of expression. Unlike Pakistan, we have the First Amendment, which protects free speech, including hate speech despite what Howard Dean says. The New York Times, in its infinite boldness, extols the virtue of a free-floating right to freedom of expression in Pakistan. There is no First Amendment there, and yet the very concept alone is sufficient for the Gray Lady to stand firmly in support of the right, conceptual though it may be.

But what of Pakistan on the Hudson? The New York Times was right to call out the outrageous of blasphemy laws, to condemn the offended mob and to recognize that only the courts, the law, stood in its way. But there, the right of free speech, free expression, is merely conceptual. Here, it’s explicit. Why won’t the New York Times be as bold in its protection of freedom at home as it is elsewhere?  Heck, it’s already got the editorial written. All it needs is the guts to stand up to its own mob.

American Blasphemy curated from Simple Justice