By Tirthankar ChandaPosted on 08-05-2019Modified on 08-05-2019 at 21:36

The case of Pakistan's Asia Bibi, sentenced to death for blasphemy in 2010, sparked outrage around the world. A Christian woman in her fifties, she was acquitted six months ago by the Pakistani Supreme Court, but she could not resume her life because of the death threats hanging over her head. Blasphemy is an incendiary issue in Pakistan.

1 - What is blasphemy?

Christian Asia Bibi has left Pakistan and is in Canada, according to her lawyer. It is undoubtedly the last act of a medieval drama of sanction for remarks considered blasphemous. This tragedy has kept the world in suspense for almost ten years.

Test of definition of blasphemy. The word comes from Latin blasphemia , which literally means "defamation", derived in turn from the Greek word blasphemos , which refers to uttering a word or spreading a sound ( pheme ) that others may receive as an injury. To blaspheme is therefore to insult, to slander.

The notion has evolved over the centuries to deal only with the insult applied in the religious context. In its first edition of 1694, the Dictionary of the French Academy defines blasphemy as "unholy word, speech held against the honor of God, or against divine and sacred things". The meaning of the term has since stabilized, as attested by the definition given by blasphemy to the contemporary edition of the same dictionary: "a word that outrages divinity or insults religion". Outrage to religion , after the sliding of meaning.

2 - History of the repression of blasphemy

Christian churches once persecuted on the basis of blasphemy. We remember the knight of the Bar, tortured, tortured before being executed in 1766. The young Frenchman of 19 years was accused of having sung bawdy songs and refused to discover the passage of the Blessed Sacrament, during of Corpus Christi. " Unholy, blasphemer and execrable sacrilege ," could be read on the sign that had been fixed on his back by taking him to the torture. The affair had outraged the Europe of the Enlightenment and aroused the ire especially of Voltaire who will mobilize his Encyclopedist friends against the " fanaticism " and " the barbarity of the justice of the king ".

The French Revolution abolished the crime of blasphemy, and resolutely laid down the principle of freedom of expression through the Declaration of Human Rights of August 26, 1789 . The crime of blasphemy will not reappear as such in France, but it will resume service under the Restoration in the form of " insult to public morality and religion ", before being definitively repealed in 1881. In a secular Republic based on freedom of belief, blasphemy is no longer necessary.

As for the Christian Church, if it has evolved over time on the question of punishing civil denigration of which Christianity and its dogmas could be the object, many Western countries, of Christian tradition, still have legislation today. criminal anti-blasphemy. Blasphemy remains a very sensitive notion in the Muslim world. The latter continues to see in the notion of blasphemy an unforgivable moral fault and rages with more or less brutality against its authors. The severity of its sanctions varies across countries and regimes.

The Muslim world, represented by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) even managed to get a vote on the " fight against defamation " on March 26, 2007 in the UN Human Rights Council. religions "which can be seen as a call to condemn blasphemy.

3 - Blasphemy laws in force around the world

According to the latest report (2017) by USCIRF, the US federal agency for religious freedom, blasphemy is still punishable by law in 71 countries. 25.4% of them are located in the Middle East and North Africa, 22.5% in Europe, 15.5% in Sub-Saharan Africa and 11.2% in the Americas. More than half of these countries are Muslim-majority, and, as the report's authors point out, blasphemy sentences can be particularly severe in these countries.

It will be read in this report that Pakistan , birthplace of Christian Asia Bibi whose fate had an international impact, has one of the most draconian legislation on blasphemy. The sanctions affect the Christian and Hindu minorities, but especially Muslims and followers of the Ahmadi movement (close to the Sufis), accused of apostasy.

Finally, the main interest of the USCIRF report is undoubtedly to have drawn attention to the survival of anti-blasphemy laws in European democracies. These sanctions are rarely applied, but their mere existence strengthens the defense of non-Western countries that accuse Westerners of double standards.

Moreover, Denmark and Malta have repealed their range of anti-blasphemy laws recently, a few months after the release of the report.

    On the same subject

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