While Westerners tend to view such bans as obscurantist and ridiculous, it was only 30 years ago that some local councils in the UK tried to ban cinemas showing Monty Pythons religious satire Life of Brian. In Ireland, long dominated by the Catholic Church, remnants of such attitudes remain in the constitution, which bans the publication or utterance of blasphemous, seditious, or indecent matter. In 2009 the Irish parliament passed legislationthat spelt out the offence in more specific terms: publishing or uttering matter that is grossly abusing or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion thereby intentionally causing outrage among a substantial number of adherents of that religion. Supporters of the clause hoped that the inclusion of words such as intentionally and substantial would underpin freedom of speech by setting out possible grounds on which to mount defences of allegedly blasphemous acts. A woman holds up a copy of the Koran during a demonstration against cartoons depicting the Prophet But to their dismay, Pakistan picked up the wording and proposed to the UN Human Rights Council that it be adopted internationally. The attempt failed and, fearful of becoming model of how to limit free speech, Ireland is due to hold a referendum that would remove the blasphemy article from the constitution with a view to replacing it with legislation on hate speech.
Posted on: Fri, 23 Jan 2015 08:41:27 +0000