Views on Ireland's controversial new blasphemy law

Below is an excerpt from "On Faith," an Internet feature sponsored by The Washington Post and Newsweek. Each week, more than 50 figures from the world of faith engage in a conversation about an aspect of religion. This week, atheists and others are protesting a new law in Ireland under which a person can be found guilty of blasphemy if "he or she publishes or utters matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion." The penalty is a fine of up to about $35,000. "On Faith" asked panelists: Should Ireland or any nation have a law against blasphemy?

Absolutely not! . . . This is nothing more than a sop to Europe's growing number of radical Islamists. There were never suggestions of blasphemy laws when people take the name of God or Jesus Christ in vain. Only now is an anti-blasphemy law imposed. It will surely be another failed attempt to appease the growing threat of radical Islam. . . .

This will only encourage the radicals in their efforts to cause Ireland and the rest of the West to submit in other areas until we are fully submitted . . . or dead.

-- Cal Thomas, syndicated political columnist

For any country to enact a blasphemy law is to invite the depredations of the medieval world to reach its benighted claw out and score the modern body politic. If we have learned anything about religion in the thousands of years of its operation, it is that religion does its best work away from the governmental wheel. Secular courts are not the place to enforce a purely religious standard or law.

. . . God's dignity is way beyond the need for legal defense. As an alternative to prosecution, religious people should take it upon themselves to act in a way that validates what they claim about God.

-- David Wolpe, rabbi, Sinai Temple, Los Angeles

Certainly, the "right to offend" should not be exercised lightly. But it is also important for religious people to consider what really is at risk, both spiritually and politically, when they assert that their own "right to take offense" should outweigh all other social or legal concerns. Blasphemous expression, painful and offensive as it is intended to be, can nonetheless provide an impetus for critical self-reflection that religion and religious people all too often need.

-- Mathew N. Schmalz, associate professor of religious studies, College of the Holy Cross