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Blasphemy and Public Reason

by EmmaZahn 10/20/2012 - 4:39 pm

...While any argument for squelching speech in deference to religious taboos is obviously “illiberal” in its content, there’s a narrow sense in which this kind of argument is formally liberal, in that it strives to meet the requirements of liberal public reason. It is not, in other words, an argument that depends on one’s sharing any particular comprehensive religious or metaphysical doctrine, but aims to present reasons that could be accepted by persons of any faith (or none).

Read the full article at http://www.juliansanchez.com/2012/10/19/blasphemy-and-public-reason/

Egyptian activist Maikel Nabil Sanad, in his Foreign Policy Democracy Lab blog post of October 19, provides a laundry list of actual examples of the point made in Sanchez's summary paragraph, among other points made.

by artappraiser 10/21/2012 - 8:44 pm

I've come to point, after more than a decade of reading on this issue whenever there's another blowup, that it would be difficult to convince me that's it's not the case that most blasphemy laws still exist in Islamic countries because they are convenient political tools. Sometimes used as direct political tools, sometimes used as "distract the anger elsewhere" political tools, whatever, you can usually find politicians, wanna be politcal actors, or political goals behind their use.

And of course, apart from actual legality/illegality, when anger boils (or in the case of the more moderate, anger doesn't boil but offense is taken) against some supposed western incident, inevitably it ends up in every case I can think of to not really be about Islam, but about perceived lack of respect and the SAMO Arab/Islamic humiliation problem. That nobody respects their culture. Well, as many more moderate Islamic writers finally started opining this last time round: maybe the fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings; give the rest of the world just a bit more to respect, maybe you'll get some equal to what basically everyone else gets. Getting rid of the idea of prosecuting non-believers for blasphemy might make a good start.

by artappraiser 10/21/2012 - 9:06 pm (re: artappraiser)

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