Why does Canada still have a law against blasphemy?

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It’s a relief that a mentally-challenged, 14-year-old Pakistani Christian child accused of blasphemy for allegedly burning pages of the Koran has now been released from jail.

This follows testimony from witnesses who claim an imam planted evidence in an effort to incriminate the child and scare off local Christians.

But lost in all the handwringing over whether the child should have been charged with blasphemy, or whether the imam should now be charged, is the issue of why any civilized nation would include blasphemy amongst its laws.

More to the point, how can we justify the fact our criminal laws include blasphemy as a criminal offence? I’m not making this up.

Section 296 of the Canadian Criminal Code makes it an indictable offence for anyone to publish a blasphemous libel. The maximum sentence is ostensibly a term of imprisonment not to exceed two years.

True, there have been no prosecutions in about 75 years and it’s likely any prosecution would be met with a successful Charter challenge.

But the law remains on the books and, to that extent, seemingly reflects public policy in Canada.

As long as the law is there, it is available for anyone to commence a private prosecution of any publication that he or she feels is insulting to a religion.

Surely, if we are to show solidarity with those who have suffered and continue to suffer under blasphemy laws in what amount to medieval societies, we must repeal this odious law in Canada.

Some countries, including Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, shockingly, still prescribe the death penalty for blasphemers.

Many Western countries criminalize blasphemy, or religious insult, as it is sometimes labelled.

But England abolished its blasphemy laws in 2008 and they’ve never been put in place in the United States.

Blasphemy is a victimless crime unless, of course, someone believes their deity is capable of having hurt feelings.

Nick Cohen, a British writer and author of the informative book on censorship, You Can’t Read This Book, asks, “are the delicate deities in question so thin-skinned that their ‘self-esteem’ can only recover if their followers perform human sacrifices and present them with corpses of their critics?” That’s no exaggeration. In Pakistan, even arguing against blasphemy laws can and has led to death.

Cohen pokes fun at those who support blasphemy laws by referring to the “tender feelings and brittle minds of believers” who suffer “psychic harm from hearing a strongly held view challenged” because of their need to “mount the barricades against new thoughts that might torment and enrage the faithful”.

Aside from being a victimless crime, blasphemy laws punish people for insulting a concept or an idea.

Since when is it a goal of our criminal law to protect concepts or ideologies, as opposed to people?

Worse, blasphemy laws are usually used to punish minorities and thereby constitute not only a violation of free speech rights but also freedom of religion.

Blasphemy laws are therefore used as a tool to violate human rights, not to enforce them.

So why hasn’t Canada repealed its odious blasphemy laws?

We’ve repealed section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. That section on hate speech was a de facto blasphemy law, so why not go a step further and support free expression and minority rights by repealing section 296 of the Criminal Code? Indeed, why not repeal the remaining hate speech sections in provincial human rights codes?

True, such actions would be largely symbolic, but they would send a message to Canadians about our core values, that we value free speech over archaic principles protecting ideologies.

Finally, how can we justify our criticism of blasphemy laws in Pakistan and other countries, while our own blasphemy laws remain part of our Criminal Code?

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