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Atheist Ireland's web campaign includes 'blasphemies' from justice minister Dermot Ahern
Ian Paisley
January 10, 2010
VOL 27 NO 2
Atheist group lobbies against blasphemy law
Campaigners publish anti-religious quotes online in bid to overturn new law
Mark Twain
Pope Benedict
Salman Rushdie
Atheist Ireland has launched a campaign to repeal the new blasphemy law, which came into operation on Friday. The campaign claims that justice minister Dermot Ahern and several world figures have made blasphemous statements. The organisation has published 25 quotes from various personalities which they said would be in breach of the new law.
The Defamation Act 2009 updates the law on defamation and provides for recognition of an independent press council. But it was the section providing for the offence of blasphemous libel which generated the most debate as the legislation went through the Oireachtas. The law makes the publication or utterance of blasphemous matter a crime punishable by a €25,000 fine. The law provides for the defence that a reasonable person would find genuine literary, artistic, political, scientific or academic value in the matter to which the offence relates.
"This new law is both silly and dangerous", said Michael Nugent, chairman of Atheist Ireland. "It is silly because medieval religious laws have no place in a modern secular republic, where the criminal law should protect people and not ideas. And it is dangerous because it incentivises religious outrage, and because Islamic states led by Pakistan are already using the wording of this Irish law to promote new blasphemy laws at UN level. We believe in the golden rule: that we have a right to be treated justly, and that we have a responsibility to treat other people justly. Blasphemy laws are unjust: they silence people in order to protect ideas. In a civilised society, people have a right to express and to hear ideas about religion even if other people find those ideas outrageous."
Atheist Ireland has published a list of 25 blasphemous quotations from well-known figures including Ian Paisley, Mark Twain, Salman Rushdie and Pope Benedict XVI, as well as the justice minister. The group is calling on the government to repeal the blasphemy law and hold a referendum to remove the reference to blasphemy from the Constitution.
Among the published blasphemous statements include what Ian Paisley, then an MEP, said to the pope in the European Parliament in 1988: "I denounce you as the antichrist". Paisley's website describes the antichrist as "a liar, the true son of the father of lies, the original liar from the beginning... he will imitate Christ, a diabolical imitation, Satan transformed into an angel of light, which will deceive the world".
The group also maintains that a comment published by politician and writer Conor Cruise O'Brien in 1989 is also blasphemous: "In the last century the Arab thinker Jamal al-Afghani wrote: 'Every Muslim is sick and his only remedy is in the Koran'. Unfortunately the sickness gets worse the more the remedy is taken," he wrote.
January 3, 2010
Comments
#2 Kevin commented, on January 3, 2010 at 8:07 p.m.:
We should be less tolerant of faith based religons instead of giving them such unnecessary legal protection. Faith after all is belief in something without evidence. In no other walk of life would such unproven beliefs or dogma be accepted.
#3 Briain Mac Fiaich commented, on January 3, 2010 at 9:10 p.m.:
It is quite obvious to whom this blasphemy law is intended to placate.No doubt the "quid pro quo" hoped for, will be no bombs on planes at Dublin Airport. What next, Sharia Law?
#4 Little Al commented, on January 5, 2010 at 5:29 p.m.:
OK - a law designed to curb hatred against racial, national,and religious groups and people would do the trick - not this religion-based mess which would appear to be designed to protect a bunch of child-raping so-called priests (NOTE: No reference to their particular church...) How far back into the centuries can this so-called modern democracy go???
#5 patrick commented, on January 6, 2010 at 9:50 p.m.:
all your religions are bullcrap,no one person can know what another person thinks,people get together to provide and to find protection in the 'herd' or group such as church groups, established religions, political parties and cults of various kinds. To write laws to protect these groups from criticism is insanity,but then when you are all sheep who is going to have the courage to stand up and say STOP. You get the leadership you deserve and by golly do you people deserve the Goms, Gurnets and Gulpins that you have at present.
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What is this government at? When the country is sinking we have this rubbish thrust upon us. And during the week we had another matronly minister attacking Single parents for so called "policy" reasons. Have we no learned how the curse of religion and it's proponents have destroyed us? Time for this shower to get their act together and they may begin by setting correct priorities and not this catholic based guff.