Large Fierce Mammal

Blasphemy
Noun (plural blasphemies)

The action or offence of speaking sacrilegiously about God or sacred things; profane talk: he was detained on charges of blasphemy.

Two incidents of punishment for “blasphemy” have been in the news of late – one meted out by judicial decision of a Saudi Arabian court against blogger Raif Badawi who ran a website promoting debate over religion and politics in his country, and the other at the hands of Muslim zealots who took it upon themselves to exact “vengeance” by shooting to death most of the editorial staff of the French satire magazine Charlie Hebdo for violating Islamic law by creating and publishing cartoons depicting The Prophet Muhammad.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/30849977

In the first instance, Raif Badawi’s convictions for cybercrime, disobeying his father and insulting Islam, earned him a sentence of 1,000 lashes and 10 years in prison – the lashes to be administered publicly, fifty at a time, on Fridays. The second fifty were set to land this past Friday, but were stayed after, “…the Saudi king said his case had been referred to the Supreme Court after protests over the flogging.”

According to Amnesty International, the flogging sentence was postponed, “on medical grounds”.

In the matter of Charlie Hebdo, enough has been spoken, depicted, and written that I feel safe in not wasting your time, Goode Reader, in rehashing any of the gory details here, no matter how much you might enjoy my take on it. My singularly selfish reason for presenting both the matters of Raif Badawi and Charlie Hebdo today is to use them as a launching pad for presentation of my own definition – what I mean – when I speak the word “blasphemy”, and how these two events compare to it.

I am privileged to personally know, respect, and am in turn respected by, more than a few people whose spiritual beliefs bear little similarity to my own. None of that dissimilarity affects the relationship in any negative way; in fact quite the contrary. Who cares what Spiritual Path anyone is on beyond that whatever it means for each of us, the end result is a Finished Human Being?

Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Pagan, Wiccan, Atheist … you name it. It makes no difference what label you apply to yourself, nor even if you apply one at all, for the name holds far less significance than the fundamental and visible expression of your beliefs, and by that I mean the way in which they govern your behaviour. On those rare occasions when someone, learning that we LFMs are not Christians, inquires as to what then, exactly, we are, my reply is usually an iteration of this question – “Why don’t you watch me, see how I treat the world and how I live my life, and then decide for yourself from there?”

On even rarer occasions, when I feel the tone of the query calls for it, I fix them with a look that lasts until they start to seem uncomfortable, and then answer, “Noble Savages.”

So then, in the face of a question that doesn’t come with any tone of insult, judgement, or enmity; my answer isn’t born of any ire that someone had the temerity to ask such a personal question, nor is it intended to belittle or deliver a sarcastic barb. Simply put, there is no label, nor any 30 second sound bite I can deliver, that will even come close to explaining to a casual passer by the depths of my mind and Spirit. What truly matters to me, and the kind of Man I am, will be revealed in the expressions of those things, as found in my words and deeds. Anyone truly interested in knowing the answer to the riddle that is me, you, or anyone else; of any Tribe, Clan, or Nation – and yes, of any Species – will find their answers there without even uttering a word of inquiry. ~ A Long Winter’s Night 2013 – Day 2: Of Pagans, Heathens, and the Noble Savage

Canada has a little known bit of legislation on its books that is only now seeing renewed (though sporadic) mention in news items that have been released since the late unpleasantness in France, dealing with matters of “blasphemous libel”, whatever that is because it seems open to interpretation. Never a good thing where jurisprudence is concerned.

The very seat of the Commonwealth had such a law until June of 2008 when, after what is described as “long debate”,

… England abolished the ancient common law offence of blasphemous libel.

Historically, the crime of blasphemy was committed whenever “contemptuous,” “reviling,” or “scurrilous” statements were made about God, Jesus Christ or the Church of England.

The offence had been the basis for hundreds of prosecutions throughout the 18th and 19th centuries before falling into a period of dormancy after 1922.

Surprisingly, however, the offence was suddenly resurrected as the basis of a successful private prosecution against a gay newspaper in 1977.

Subsequent private prosecutions against Salman Rushdie’s book The Satanic Verses in the late 1980s and against the musical Jerry Springer: The Opera just last year were unsuccessful but equally disturbing to modern proponents of free speech.

What most Canadians (even most lawyers) don’t realize is that our own Criminal Code also prohibits blasphemous libel and sets a penalty of up to two years in prison.

The statute doesn’t define what constitutes a blasphemous libel. Instead, it only notes that statements made in “good faith and conveyed in decent language” are exempted.

Although the last known government prosecution was in the 1930s, the law was invoked in private prosecutions at least as late as 1979. ~ Blasphemy law should be repealed

Or actually, 1980, when the statute was used in a private prosecution brought against a theatre in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario for showing the Monty Python film, Life of Brian. Often accused of being a spoof on Jesus Christ, Life of Brian is nothing of the sort, telling instead, “… the story of Brian Cohen …, a young Jewish man who is born on the same day as, and next door to, Jesus Christ and is subsequently mistaken for the Messiah.”

In his reply to a related post I recently shared on the LFM Facebook page, one commentator put it best:

Funny thing about “Life of Brian”. There is no blasphemy in it. Watch it and try and find some. Jesus is actually featured in the movie as a separate character. They do not deny the existence of God nor do they insult Him in any fashion. Any offence taken is merely inferred from the subject matter. Even Brian’s mother said, ” ‘E’s not the messiah, ‘e’s a very naught boy!”

“Any offense taken is merely inferred from the subject matter.” Aye, there it is. Back in 2012 I wrote a related sentiment:

I do not consider good or evil to be connected to supernatural events, nor do I consider them Natural for they do not exist in Nature unless somebody brought them to the party. Man is the only animal who makes the distinction, so that narrows the list of suspects.

And ended that same piece with a poem, the last verse of which goes,

In the Valley of the Shadow,
If the only Man I be,
All good and evil found within
Is what I brought with me.

A while later, and based on personal experience, I wrote another poem called The Zealot, the closing verse of which went,

When hatred cleaves itself to “faith”,
And sad it is to tell it,
There’s no religion in the world
Exclusive to the zealot.

So how does all this speak to my own views on “blasphemy”? If it isn’t already ever so slightly obvious, I would posit that the legally understood (if it can actually be said to be legally understood as a thing in itself) definition of blasphemy is based on a singularly heinous deceit – that “blasphemy” can only be committed against the God of Judaism, Christianity, or Islam; and of course to the sacred symbols of those. By extension, the crime might also be extended to that held sacred by adherents to other recognized faiths. Hindus and Buddhists for example.

This is a “crime” that has no equivalent in Nature. Are we not taught that Life itself is sacred, and that the taking of it is to occur only in pursuit of a greater good, or in prevention of greater harm? When first encountered by European explorers, does history not show that the people of the thriving cultures that already inhabited North America held the Earth Herself to be sacred? Think on this and you’ll gain an insight into a REAL Blasphemy. The kind I mean when I speak that word.

To paraphrase a famous line, I believe that killing or torturing to protect a set of beliefs from criticism is like committing rape in support of virginity.

Lastly for today, there’s the issue of freedom of expression. Getting back for a moment to the Canadian statute pertaining to “blasphemous libel”, even there in that muddy piece of legislation we see a specific exemption for utterances made in “… good faith and conveyed in decent language”. I personally believe everyone needs to understand that freedom to express absent official interference is not the same as freedom to express one’s self free from any and all consequences. This does not in any way excuse the nature of response we’ve seen in the examples cited at the top of this article, but one is a matter of a nation’s internal affairs, whether we agree with them or not, while the other is an attempt to apply religious law against people who should have seen it coming, if we’re to learn anything from history. In the end though, I have nothing to teach to the publishers of a magazine that bills itself as “Journal Irresponsable”.

Lest it be misconstrued that I am advocating self censorship before bullies, let me be clear. In the lethal case of Charlie Hebdo, the satirical depictions of The Prophet Muhammad were inspired by the actions of Islamic zealots who persist in committing violence in His name. That being the case, who brought Muhammed into the matter in the first place? To be the target of satire first requires action on the target’s part because otherwise – well – without context it just isn’t funny.

Satire isn’t about hate. It’s about a simple truth one must learn, no matter what feather unruffling lies the adults in your life may have told you in childhood – in a grown up world, sometimes they ARE laughing at you, not with you, and you need to grow a fucking backbone and find options that don’t include shooting people for running off at the mouth, or pen.

Notwithstanding whether it was the Chicken or the egg that came first, I understand a sense of insult being felt by sincere and devout Muslims of the world at the publication of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons. But the world is not subject to Islamic law, and what happened in France is not an act of devotion so much as an act of depravity poised atop a religious excuse. If the stated reason for the attack had been vengeance for military action by western countries in Syria, then at least it would have made some semblance of sense as push back by a weaker group against a stronger, but that’s not what happened. Such zealots may indeed be following their faith as they see it, but they are of the sort that need more. Their recipe demands an additional seasoning of evil, for true depravity has a voracious appetite that always needs more of itself, and this appetite will build until it is met with a reason to stop. Permanently.

And that’s how it went this time, as it must every time.