Offensive cartoons and blasphemous libel

A couple of months ago, Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published a set of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed. These were considered grossly offensive by Muslims (both because a few verge on outright religious vilification, and because depicting their prophet is considered idolatry by many Muslims), and the publication resulted in protests, diplomatic complaints (by people who had clearly never heard the phrase "a free press"), and boycotts against Danish firms. Of course, suppressing something simply makes it spread, and overnight seven newspapers in France, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, and Spain republished the cartoons. And locally, DPF has got into the act as well - resulting in the usual unseemly display in his comments, of course.

Many of the cartoons are excellent social commentary on violence, Islam, intimidation and censorship. Some are offensive. And as mentioned above, some verge on outright religious vilification (DPF has naturally chosen one of the latter - a crude depiction of Mohammed with a bomb for a turban, which captures the views of his readers so well). But as I've said before on many occasions, there is no right not to be offended. I'm not publishing them here, because frankly I don't want to attract the sort of people who would want to look at them - but I don't for a moment think that people shouldn't be allowed to publish them.

But apart from providing an opportunity to once again restate my opposition to censorship and hate speech laws, DPFs posting also allows me to make another point: that

if he had published an equivalent cartoon about Jesus, he could have gone to jail.

While supposedly a free country, we still have a law against blasphemous libel on the books, imposing a penalty of up to one year's imprisonment for publishing material which speaks of God "irreverently" or "impiously". It is considered by most legal commentators to apply exclusively to the Christian religion. The law has only been used once, in 1922, and the jury refused to convict (see R v Glover, [1922] GLR 185). But several publications and institutions have been threatened with it since, notably the Massey University capping magazine Masskerade in 1970, and Te Papa over the "virgin in a condom" exhibition in the 90's. And the fact that the law has fallen into disuse and is widely considered dead does not mean that it cannot be revived - the prosecution of Tim Selwyn for sedition is proof enough of that.

This law violates freedom of expression. It violates freedom of religion. It violates the separation of church and state and the principle that the government should not promote or protect one faith over another. As such, it has no place on the books of a modern, secular, liberal democracy like New Zealand. Unfortunately, the last attempt to repeal it - as part of the 1989 rewrite of the Crimes Act - died in committee. And so we are still stuck with this archaic law, which could be dredged up at any time to protect one religion over others.

During the election campaign, numerous National MPs voiced their opposition to hate-speech legislation designed to protect gays from vilification, on the grounds that freedom of expression was sacrosanct. But blasphemous libel is nothing more than hate-speech protection for (the Christian version of) god. I am currently seeking an MP to front a private member's bill to repeal this archaic law. It would be nice if one of those MPs showed some consistency and volunteered.

Update (03/02/06): Added link to Glover case.