This subject entered my consciousness by stages. I’d become vaguely aware of the application of laws regarding apostasy, blasphemy and heresy in many of the Islamic states over the past several years. Visions of women being stoned, men being put to death or imprisoned for various offenses come to mind. Then the fatwa issued by Ayatollah Khomeini calling for the death of Salman Rushdie for having the temerity to publish Satanic Verses, which is presumed to have blasphemed Allah, in some fashion, further framed the issue in my mind. I thought it strange, even a little “other worldly”, but paid it little heed because I thought Salman would advisably lay low, and the whole thing would blow over. Not long thereafter we had the Danish cartoonist who profaned Mohammed by caricature and the beautiful young woman from Cameroon who renounced Islam and became a target for punishment as well. And finally, the Governor of the State of Punjab was assassinated for the the grievous offense of supporting an initiative to modify the Pakistani laws on blasphemy. How could this be, I thought? Here were otherwise sane people ordering other people killed and actually killing others who they perceived as having insulted their particular god. Where did it all start, and when will it ever end?
The answer to the first is complicated, as you might imagine, and the answer to the second is unknown and may not be knowable. Let me give you a little background. First some definitions are in order:
Apostasy: The renunciation of a religion by a person of that religion.
Blasphemy: An impious utterance or action concerning god or sacred things. An imprecation derogatory to or insulting to that which is held to be divine.
Heresy: An opinion at variance with the orthodox or excepted doctrine of a church or religious system.
As you can see, all three are closely related and potentially overlapping. There are those who hold that heresy is subsumed by blasphemy, which is held by early proponents of the Christian faith to be The Eternal Sin. I’m not going to deal with apostasy except to say that if you are in an Islamic state and are planning on renouncing your faith, you had better have prepared a very quick get away. Actually, you can get away with apostasy in an Islamic state if you are insane or are under the age of eighteen; otherwise, you’re history. Oddly, they don’t give the death penalty to women for apostasy, only sane men. I guess they just stick apostate women (or women apostates) in a hole in the ground and wait them out.
If you think about it, it’s not to hard to understand why religious institutions and states, when dominated by those religious institutions, are not inclined not to tolerate those given to impious utterances or unorthodox opinions. If the fear of eternal damnation doesn’t sway people’s behavior, you need other tools. An attack on the church was considered an attack on the state, and treason upon either was not to be tolerated. Death to the blokes.
Those who are prone to look for the rootstock of such ideas have looked at the holy literature of the three major religions (who were and are the only proponents of prohibitions against blasphemy) and found that it is only the Qu’ran of the Islamic faith that does not mention any prohibitions on blasphemy. In fact, Mohammed seems to have been pretty casual about criticism from those he met on the trail of being the last prophet. In spite of this lack of scriptural direction, Muslims today seem to be the ones that have most ardently applied the horrific punishments they have on the books. The Jews had a pretty straightforward case for it in their Torah. Leviticus 24:16 says, “those who speak blasphemy shall surely be put to death.” Not much room for debate there. Yes, I know that Leviticus is in the Christian bible as well, but they are more prone to point to the numerous New Testament statements of both Paul and Jesus who describe blasphemy as the only “unforgivable sin”. However, it should be noted that the last execution in the mostly Christian west was in England in 1697, when a liberal Cambridge professor was put to death for denying the literal truth of the Old Testament. So I guess the Christians look to Leviticus as well. India, which is a majority Hindu nation, has never had laws or cultural prohibitions concerning blasphemy. They burn people for a lot of other reasons but not for defaming their religion. I guess it could be because they have so many gods, it would get pretty confusing figuring out who was dissing who.
Blasphemy has been around as long as man and the gods he created, but it first became notable when old Socrates was put to death – not for demeaning existing gods, but for introducing new ones. Widespread persecution for blasphemy was institutionalized under Pope Gregory IX, who created the Dominican Order in 1231 for the express purpose of hounding (I use the word advisedly as you will see) Mohammedans, Jews and dissident Christians. The word “Dominican,” don’t you see, is derived from the Latin “domini canes” or Hounds of the Lord. It took the ministrations of those clever Spaniards King Ferdinand II and Queen Isabella to really get the ball rolling. They wanted to beat the Pope to the punch, so to speak, so they created their own brand of Inquisition in 1478 to root out the bad guys before the Pope could get around to it. Their particular inquisition was targeted principally at the Jews and Muslims, whom they had coerced to convert to Catholicism when they issued an edict requiring conversion or else. The ones who didn’t convert, they ran out of the country…. the forced Diaspora that cost Spain dearly. What Ferdinand and Isabella really hated were the ones who converted in name only (“conversos”), but continued to practice their own particular brand of worship in secret. The Spanish Inquisition was orchestrated by a traveling circus, er, I meant ecclesiastical court, who had Might if not Right on their side. They traded on rumor and gossip, and all who came under their suspicion were assumed to be guilty, and if no confession was forthcoming, torture and death ensued. And a lot of it, death that is, ensued over the next few decades. Indeed, based on some recent genealogical research, my own ancestors were probably of the Jewish tribe, decided to convert, but were smart enough to get out while the getting was good, and came to the new world. NB. I have found in research of my father’s family that it’s likely they were sephardic jews who converted to catholicism at the behest of Kind Ferdinand, but when faced with the inquisition, fled to the new world in the 1530’s. There are those who when I’ve told this story, who say that it explains a lot about my behavior.
Sadly, it doesn’t stop there. Even that paragon of the Protestant Reformation (Martin Luther (1483-1546) of The Ninety-five Theses fame) expanded the market for blasphemous behavior by extending it beyond Islam and Judaism to Arianism and those dreaded Anabaptists. Note: for those of you who have pictures of Luther on your wall…. he was not without his own feet of clay, even though he is widely acknowledged as the founder of Christian Protestantism. In his book The Jews and Their Lies, published in 1543, Luther is found to have written as follows: “If we wish to wash our hands from the Jew’s and their blasphemy and not share in their guilt, we have to part company with them. They must be driven from our country”. This is one of his kindest remarks about the subject. He also proposed taking their money, burning their synagogues, and denying them employment. Hmmm. Do you think that Martin Luther King’s parents might have overlooked a thing or two when they named their son?
Looking closer to home, it does not surprise me that rabid antipathy for blasphemy and its related behaviors followed Christians to the new world. In The Capital Laws of New England of 1636, blasphemy is noted as a capital offense punishable by death. And they did. Put people to death, that is. What is surprising, however, is the fact that we still, today, in 2011, have laws on the books in six of these United States, which purport to prohibit blasphemous behavior of various stripes. The legislative bodies of Massachusetts, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wyoming, and of course, Oklahoma have seen fit to protect the body politic and to (sometimes) penalize miscreants who run afoul of their proscriptions for moral behavior. Massachusetts warns against willfully denying, cursing or reproaching God… or Jesus, or the Holy Ghost. I don’t know if the Holy Ghost would be able to testify or not. Michigan just doesn’t want anybody cursing the aforementioned trio, while Pennsylvania doesn’t want any profane language used about the supernatural trinity. Wyoming just warns against the use of blasphemous matter without any guidance on what that may be. My personal favorite law is the one in, you guessed it, Oklahoma, who bans ridicule of the divine and prohibits “contumelious reproach” of the same. You find me three people in all of Oklahoma who can tell you what contumelious reproach is and I’ll… well, I don’t know what I’d do, but you’re not going to find them anyway.
Now you know the whole story, and you can, if you don’t live in one of the previously mentioned six states, be as profane as you wish about pretty much anything. But fair warning… if you go north of the Red River, do not ever expect to get by with any contumelious reproach of anything. Otherwise, Vaya con Dios.
First published February 9, 2011
