September 30th: Happy International Blasphemy Day!

[NeoGreen]

https://centerforinquiry.org/press_releases/center_for_inquiry_to_celebrate_blasphemy_day_events_set_for_sept-_30/

Center For Inquiry to Celebrate Blasphemy Day; Events Set For Sept. 30
Amherst, New York (Sept. 29, 2009)

The Center for Inquiry will join worldwide participants this Wednesday in commemorating International Blasphemy Day

Participation in Blasphemy Day is part of the Center for Inquiry’s larger Campaign for Free Expression, an effort to focus attention on one of our most crucial rights: the right of individuals to express their viewpoints, opinions, and beliefs about all subjects—including religion.

The motivation behind Blasphemy Day is not to offend the religious. The primary purpose of commemorating Blasphemy Day is to call attention to the continuing threat to free expression posed by blasphemy laws—as well as the informal social taboos that treat religion as a subject that is off limits. CFI maintains that not only should there be no legal restrictions on speech about religion, but informal social taboos on discussing religion should be discarded. “Placing religion off limits in social discourse is just another, gentler way of prohibiting examination and criticism of religion,” CFI President and CEO Ronald A. Lindsay said “In my view, all subjects of human interest should be open to examination and criticism by humans.”

Sept. 30 has been designated International Blasphemy Day because it is the anniversary of the original 2005 publication of the Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad. The fury which arose within the Islamic community following this publication led to massive riots, attacks on foreign embassies and deaths.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blasphemy_Day

In some countries, blasphemy is punishable by death, such as in Afghanistan,[5] Pakistan,[6] Turkmenistan, and Saudi Arabia.[7]

As of 2015, at least fourteen member states of the European Union maintain criminal blasphemy or religious insult laws. These are Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France (Alsace-Moselle region only, long unenforced, and officially repealed in January 2017[8][9] ), Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom (Scotland and Northern Ireland only).[10] Turkey also has similar laws.[10]

In 2009 six US states still had anti-blasphemy laws on their books: Massachusetts, Michigan, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and Wyoming, but law professor Sarah Barringer Gordon states that they are "rarely enforced."