Offensive to or deviations from
Is Indonesia a beacon of free speech and open discussion? Not exactly.
…just seven months ago, Indonesia’s highest court issued a landmark ruling widely considered to be a major setback to speech and religious rights. The Constitutional Court upheld the constitutionality of Indonesia’s Blasphemy Act, which criminalizes speech or acts considered offensive to government-approved religions as well as “deviations from teachings of religion considered fundamental by scholars of the relevant religion.”
So if someone should say that Mohammed was actually a very liberal feminist kind of guy who never said that women should be beaten for disobedience…that would be a crime in Indonesia? Interesting.
The Blasphemy Act provides for both civil and criminal penalties for those who insult approved religions and those who attempt to persuade others to adhere to unofficial religions. This translates into a de facto ban on proselytizing that lends itself to overly broad and arbitrary interpretations by local governments. For example, in September 2005, three Christian women were sentenced to three years imprisonment for conducting a Christian youth program, even though the Muslim children in the program had parental permission to attend, and none of the children had converted to Christianity.
I wonder what happened to the parents who signed those permission slips.
So you can insult unapproved religions, which in this case happen to be every single one of them except Islam, and also attempt to persuade others to adhere to official religions, which again is Islam. Spectacular! Just spectacular!
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by ★ Nick Hobson ★, Ophelia Benson. Ophelia Benson said: Offensive to or deviations from http://dlvr.it/8S2bC […]
Even though almost 90% of Indonesians are supposedly Muslim, the country has six “official” religions: Islam, Catholicism, Protestantism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism. They do limit membership in the official religion club only to those that are monotheistic (yes, even the Indonesian brand of Hinduism is monotheistic). When you stop to consider all those countries, like Indonesia, where government and religion are tangled, and the inevitable problems, you have to wonder why any Christian in the U.S. would not support the separation of church and state.
The ‘monotheism’ of Balinese Hinduism resulted from frantic efforts by the Balinese to gain state recognition for Hinduism after the state decided that ‘only religions (agama) that were monotheistic, possessed a holy book, and were not restricted to a single ethnic group were eligible for state support and protection.’ (Leo Howe) In consultation with Indian scholars, the Balinese identified a high god, and asserted that they possessed a holy book in the ‘Bhagavad Gita’. Members of the official religions only are allowed to proselytise, so on the face of it those Christian women would not seem to be in the wrong even if they were trying o convert the Muslim children…
“So if someone should say that Mohammad was actually a very liberal feminist kind of guy who never said that women should be beaten for disobedience…that would be a crime in Indonesia?”
That seems right because it would be an example of “deviations from teachings of religion considered fundamental by scholars of the relevant religion.”
Governments need to recognise that their attempts at banning freedoms on the people are violence against their citizens. This is happening all over Europe and there will be a severe backlash.