Blasphemy Laws and Human Rights

A new report titled Policing Beliefs: The Impact of Blasphemy on Human Rights by Freedom House examines how blasphemy laws in various countries are used "to legitimize crackdowns on minority groups, dissidents and other divergent views under the pretext of maintaining 'social harmony.'" Also see the press release here.

According to the introduction:

In countries with weak democracies, authoritarian systems, or compromised judiciaries, these laws have a particularly pernicious effect:

• Governments have abused blasphemy laws to silence the political opposition, government critics, and other dissidents.
• Individuals have fabricated charges of blasphemy against others in their communities to settle petty disputes.
• Religious extremists have exploited blasphemy laws to justify attacks on religious minorities, thereby fostering an environment of intolerance where discrimination is effectively condoned by the state.
• Religious institutions, often with official or unofficial government backing, have used blasphemy laws to impose the state-sanctioned interpretations of religious doctrine on members of minority sects that are deemed deviant or heretical.

While freedom of expression is always constrained by blasphemy laws, through direct enforcement as well as the self-censorship they engender, this report identifies a host of other human rights that are negatively affected by such laws:

• The selective application of blasphemy laws gives rise to discrimination based on religion and belief, as religious minorities and heterodox sects are often targeted disproportionately.
• In many cases, alleged blasphemers have been arbitrarily arrested based on false or unsubstantiated accusations of blasphemy, and reports of unfair trials, lax legal procedures, and prolonged periods of pretrial or administrative detention on blasphemy charges are plentiful.
• Individuals accused of blasphemy have endured torture and ill-treatment in custody.
• Blasphemy suspects, including those who have been acquitted, have experienced breaches of their right to security of the person in the form of death threats, mob beatings, and other violence by nonstate actors.

My Research on Religion Podcast Interview

The Research on Religion Podcast, a weekly podcast series conducted by Tony Gill, Professor of Political Science at the University of Washington, recently interviewed me about my research on religious free-riding and the Mormon Church. The podcast is now up; click here to listen.

The RoR series is a terrific resource for learning about much of the current work in the social science of religion. Thanks to Professor Gill for providing such a great public good!

French Burqa Ban to go into Effect

It's official: the French Burqa ban will go into effect in Spring 2011. See CNN's story or Religion Clause's brief summary.

Druids in Great Britain

Congratulations to the Druid Network, which just received official recognition as a charity in England and Wales, putting them on par with other mainstream denominations and granting them valuable tax breaks. See the Charity Commission's official statement here.

Pew Religious Knowledge Survey

The Pew Forum just released results from its Religious Knowledge Survey. See here for details. It's getting a lot of buzz in newspapers and online media sources because atheists and agnostics scored highest on average overall, thus suggesting that atheists and agnostics know more about religion than religious people.

But this way of summarizing the data is very misleading because it implicitly places specific weights on different types of religious knowledge, and people may disagree on how these weights are placed. The simple average gives each question equal weight, but the distribution of questions is certainly arbitrary. Thus, an overall score is an arbitrary measure of religious knowledge and not very insightful. Think about it. What if you removed a couple questions about the Bible? How would that change the overall scores? What if you added a couple questions about the Bible?

A better way to look at the data is to look at topic specific questions. Look at Bible questions, then world religion questions, then public policy and religion questions. Check the scores for the people in different religious groups by type of question. This is more informative. Alas, when you do this you find that that the results are not that surprising if you already know something about the people in these religious groups.

P.S. You can test your own knowledge on this reduced version of the survey. I got 15 out of 15 correct. How many did you get correct?

How Churches Invest their Money

That's the title of this little story. It briefly discusses how the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church allocate their funds. The information is, unfortunately, not too detailed. Each church does generate income from its assets and pays taxes on the profit-making ventures according to U.S. tax policy.

Church is for the Dogs

It is not enough to have a special church service for pet owners as mentioned in an earlier post,
there must also be a special church service for the pets! How widespread will this practice become?

More Religious Regulation in the News

The 2010 USCIRF Annual Report on Religious Freedom was released last week. The Countries of Particular Concern are Burma, China, North Korea, Eritrea, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam. The Watch List consists of Afghanistan, Belarus, Cuba, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Laos, Russia, Somalia, Tajikistan, Turkey, and Venezuela.

Meanwhile, Belgium moves closer to banning burqas in public places, and the Workplace Religious Freedom Act is getting renewed attention in the U.S.