Should blasphemy laws be abolished?

Scorpion

Illuminator
Scorpion
Joined
Feb 28, 2013
Messages
3,818
I think I can answer my own question with a definite yes, and most people here will finally agree with me about something. But I would like your input. I am always willing to consider your views.
I have been tweeting criticism of the Quran on twitter for years and the other day twitter sent me an e-mail saying the Pakistan government has contacted them saying my tweets are illegal in Pakistan. I looked up Pakistan blasphemy laws and found sites that claim there are 17 people on death row in Pakistan for insulting Islam, and hundreds more doing life imprisonment for the same.

YOU BLOODY WHAT !

I was outraged, and therefore I am declaring psychological war on Pakistan.
up until they repeal their laws
No I have not gone madder than usual, I am still as mad as I always was.
I am not a melomaniac, and I am not suffering delusions of grandeur.
I feel like all my life has been a training for this, including the years I have spent on this forum getting put in my place, and now I can see why the
spirit world went to the trouble of helping me win money for a computer.

I KNOW I CAN DO THIS, AND I WILL.

I laid awake all night and I have a strategy to get many more followers on twitter, I am going to tweet every famous person I can find and ask them if they will help me by retweeting what I post to them to their millions of followers. I am going to ask will they help me to save the lives of these 17 people. And all they have to do is retweet my post. I am sure some will succumb. By this method I should soon have a large number of followers.
At the moment I only have 646 followers and the likes of Justin Bieber has 106 million. It hardly seems fair when all he does is use his account to sell records, and I am trying to do something that matters.

My twitter name is Dajjal @dajjal_dd . you will know it is me as distinct from other people using the name, as I am using the same avatar. So you might like to join the campaign. The only snag I can see is twitter might ban me.

The following is a web site with a ready made campaign you can join.

https://end-blasphemy-laws.org/whats-wrong-with-blasphemy-laws/
 
Scorpion said:
I think I can answer my own question with a definite yes, and most people here will finally agree with me about something. But I would like your input. I am always willing to consider your views.

I have been tweeting criticism of the Quran on twitter for years and the other day twitter sent me an e-mail saying the Pakistan government has contacted them saying my tweets are illegal in Pakistan. I looked up Pakistan blasphemy laws and found sites that claim there are 17 people on death row in Pakistan for insulting Islam, and hundreds more doing life imprisonment for the same.



YOU BLOODY WHAT !



I was outraged, and therefore I am declaring psychological war on Pakistan.

up until they repeal their laws

No I have not gone madder than usual, I am still as mad as I always was.

I am not a melomaniac, and I am not suffering delusions of grandeur.

I feel like all my life has been a training for this, including the years I have spent on this forum getting put in my place, and now I can see why the

spirit world went to the trouble of helping me win money for a computer.



I KNOW I CAN DO THIS, AND I WILL.



I laid awake all night and I have a strategy to get many more followers on twitter, I am going to tweet every famous person I can find and ask them if they will help me by retweeting what I post to them to their millions of followers. I am going to ask will they help me to save the lives of these 17 people. And all they have to do is retweet my post. I am sure some will succumb. By this method I should soon have a large number of followers.

At the moment I only have 646 followers and the likes of Justin Bieber has 106 million. It hardly seems fair when all he does is use his account to sell records, and I am trying to do something that matters.



My twitter name is Dajjal @dajjal_dd . you will know it is me as distinct from other people using the name, as I am using the same avatar. So you might like to join the campaign. The only snag I can see is twitter might ban me.



The following is a web site with a ready made campaign you can join.



https://end-blasphemy-laws.org/whats-wrong-with-blasphemy-laws/
Click to expand...
If it was me I would take a break from Twitter.

Which is something I have purposefully avoided my entire life, like Facebook.

I'd buy or adopt a dog. And just walk it.

It will chill you out.

If you are intent on following through. Write a memoir no one will read. But you can read it to the dog.
 
Yea ! well, I have made a start. But I already ran into a snag. Famous people on twitter with lots of followers probably won't even read my tweet among the thousands they receive. But I am not dismayed, I will just keep tweeting them. Meantime I have targeted people with less followers. Just a few thousand or so.
So far all that has happened is I lost two followers.
 
Scorpion said:
I have been tweeting criticism of the Quran on twitter for years and the other day twitter sent me an e-mail saying the Pakistan government has contacted them saying my tweets are illegal in Pakistan.
Click to expand...
If you were a US citizen and your tweets violated US laws then you would have every right to be mad as all **** (1st amendment and all that).

However, Pakistani laws are no business of the US and Twitter can suck up to the Pakistani government all it likes

Sometimes I wish it could be different and governments that mistreated their citizens could be held to account for that. For example, it has sometimes bothered me that Zimbabwe could be turned from the bread basket of Africa to a hell hole by a despotic dictator and the only response from the rest of the world was that Zimbabwe didn't have enough strategic importance to warrant intervention.

But even in that fantasy world, there is no way that religious laws would warrant interference by outsiders.

ETA Why is this in the trials and errors section? Shouldn't it be in Religion and Philosophy?
 
Last edited:
psionl0 said:
If you were a US citizen and your tweets violated US laws then you would have every right to be mad as all **** (1st amendment and all that).

However, Pakistani laws are no business of the US and Twitter can suck up to the Pakistani government all it likes

Sometimes I wish it could be different and governments that mistreated their citizens could be held to account for that. For example, it has sometimes bothered me that Zimbabwe could be turned from the bread basket of Africa to a hell hole by a despotic dictator and the only response from the rest of the world was that Zimbabwe didn't have enough strategic importance to warrant intervention.

But even in that fantasy world, there is no way that religious laws would warrant interference by outsiders.

ETA Why is this in the trials and errors section? Shouldn't it be in Religion and Philosophy?
Click to expand...

As far as I can see it is impossible for the people of Pakistan to question Islam without risking imprisonment and possibly the death penalty. Therefore we in the free world should fight for their rights.

I would rather have put this in the religion and philosophy section as it would probably get more trade there, but I thought it was more like a legal debate.
 
Scorpion said:
I would rather have put this in the religion and philosophy section as it would probably get more trade there, but I thought it was more like a legal debate.
Click to expand...
There is nothing legal about this unless you can get Pakistan to sign a treaty agreeing to end Blasphemy laws.
 
psionl0 said:
There is nothing legal about this unless you can get Pakistan to sign a treaty agreeing to end Blasphemy laws.
Click to expand...

Well I am doing my best. I just tweeted president Trump asking him to retweet my tweet containing a link to the web site in my OP. But the numbers of people answering his post went up by a couple of thousand while I was typing my tweet. So I don't suppose he will actually read it.
 
The broader and far more useful case is the argument against absolute truth. There is much in religion and politics that attempts to use so-called "absolutes" to justify force owing to "absolute" authority. In the case of religion in general, anything having to do with the "supernatural" self-excludes itself from the natural by definition, and self-defines itself therefore as indefensible/impossible, as it is not subject to objective observation or confirmation.

An absolute truth is an opinion claimed as fact, and since it is by definition unsupported, its proponents will resort to anything from the obstinacy of a child to adult temper tantrums to violence, including extreme measures. That humankind in general struggles with this is owed, IMO, not only to the inheritance of mythical religious frameworks that are purported to be comprised of unchanging, divine truths, but to the observable tendency to seek that same level of "authority" ever since, such as in formal logic games seeking to make "truth statements". Evidence can be seen as well in the mistaken arguments that inductive reasoning is impossible owing to the appearance of black swans, or some other metaphor. Proper inductive reasoning, in a scientific sense, is merely counting instances of observations, and never need make "definitive" statements. To wit, science does not ever claim "all swans are white", a truth statement, rather, it may claim, say, "of all swans observed, all are white". Upon finding a black swan, those using improper reasoning, the old model, are confounded by a broken truth. Earth shattering! Truth is in danger! Science yawns and says, "of all swans observed, one is black, the others white".

TL;DR Absolutism has a contagious meme many may get, which is that it is "truth" we are after, or that the "truth shall set you free". Quite the contrary, it is faithful observation that enables us access to reliable (repeatable) and valid (veridical) plans, actions, and considerations.

ETA: In answer to your original query, yes. Question is how.
 
Last edited:
Why the need for blasphemy laws?

If the gods aren't punishing people for blasphemy, why do people think they have to do it for them?
By allahs beard it seems people think gods can't stand up for themselves. Jesus H christ.

Puny Gods.
 
Easy enough to answer the question. So here's another one, maybe a little more difficult: Do secular societies have similar arrangements, of dearly held beliefs, and laws that prohibit dissent and ridicule regarding those beliefs?
 
cullennz said:
If it was me I would take a break from Twitter.

Which is something I have purposefully avoided my entire life, like Facebook.

I'd buy or adopt a dog. And just walk it.

It will chill you out.

If you are intent on following through. Write a memoir no one will read. But you can read it to the dog.
Click to expand...

Yes indeed!

This is how I like to chill out in the morning before work - take the dog for a walk on beautiful Tahunanui Beach near where I live...

TB1.jpg


TB2.jpg


Just her and me and the beach
 
Last edited:
angrysoba said:
Should blasphemy laws be abolished?

Ummm...yes.

Next question.
Click to expand...

I have long been horrified by Pakistan's blasphemy laws, and more than that, its culture of punishing perceived blasphemy by mob action.

But, I don't live in Pakistan and have no plans to ever visit there, so I consider it a matter for Pakistanis to overcome.
 
theprestige said:
Easy enough to answer the question. So here's another one, maybe a little more difficult: Do secular societies have similar arrangements, of dearly held beliefs, and laws that prohibit dissent and ridicule regarding those beliefs?
Click to expand...

Also easy to answer. A fair description of a secular society is one which defines its grounding principles on foundational arguments that do not rely on supernatural givens, laws, or commands. It therefore must employ preferential reasoning based on some set of premises which are agreed to by consensus. Whereas dissent within the field of play defined by that reasoning and set of agreed principles is a feature and not a bug, dissent with respect to the foundational arguments, or to the rational and logical derivations thereof as a means of accomplishing the same by attrition, is counter to the interest of a community based on them and will lead to systemic breakdown.

That this is so comes from the very basic twin lessons that the natural world does provide, yet not prescribe:
  1. Nature operates on causes and effects that obey laws, and thus can be understood. Cause and effect are the model for logic, the first freebie from nature.
  2. Nature's outcomes are predictable because of its adherence to laws. The second freebie from Nature is: If you want x outcomes, your logic must adhere to reason and be self-consistent.
From this we get that the formal systems we base on preferential reasoning must do similarly, or yield unpredictable, contradictory or biased results. This gives us, by way of example, the legal concept of rational basis.

And to the point, no roundabouts:
  • Those philosophies, policies, and ideologies that would deny the basic social interdependence upon which civilization is built are savage and contrary to the self-interest of anyone, say, wishing not to have to hunt and gather. Question of choice, but they can be argued against on the basis of their chaotic nature, as well as declared incompatible with modernity, democracy, and the rule of law.
  • Those philosophies, policies, and ideologies that would deny the critical foundational precept in democracy that all are politically equal are the dialectical enemies of democracy, and may be attacked on that basis.
  • Fair enough so far, but there is the last category. Those policies etc that seek to portray as compatible, while not being so, are insidious, irrational, or both.
I could go on as to when such policies, etc., violate the often unstated but derivable ethics/morals of a society, they can be considered morally repugnant. And so on.

TL;DR. Indeed! Preferential reasoning can have teeth and defend itself in perfectly legitimate terms, no holds barred.
 
Scorpion said:
The following is a link to a petition to save someone who has been arrested for insulting Muhammad.

https://www.change.org/p/internatio...ed_by_id=fa8306f0-8bf9-11ea-843f-6bf08a954961
Click to expand...
In the time since, he has become a prolific humanist activist in Nigeria, helping the secular movement grow there.

This morning, we got word that Mubarak has been arrested in Nigeria and this time, he’s in custody due to public complaints of insulting "The Prophet". He has not been formally charged.
Click to expand...
So this isn't really about blasphemy, but insulting behavior and stirring up trouble.

I was outraged, and therefore I am declaring psychological war on Pakistan.
up until they repeal their laws
No I have not gone madder than usual, I am still as mad as I always was.
I am not a melomaniac, and I am not suffering delusions of grandeur.
Click to expand...
Yes, you are. Keep your nose out of other people's business, and stop insulting them. These activists are getting the attention they deserve and want. Don't be one of them.
 
Roger Ramjets said:
So this isn't really about blasphemy, but insulting behavior and stirring up trouble.

Yes, you are. Keep your nose out of other people's business, and stop insulting them. These activists are getting the attention they deserve and want. Don't be one of them.
Click to expand...


I find myself agreeing with Scorpion here. What happens to people in other countries is the concern of all of us. If you think you can live in an insular world without interference from outside, you are deluded Roger. If you can complacently ignore suffering and injustice to others, because they are geographically isolated from you, that is surprising.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom