Blasphemy in the UK

The Archbishop of Canterbury is proposing new laws to forbid, get this, "thoughtless and ... cruel styles of speaking and acting." From an account of Dr. Rowan Williams' address:

Challenging the liberal argument that free speech must always prevail, Williams raised the question of what society would be like if insensibility to the religious or to those of other faiths goes unquestioned.

"It is one thing to deny a sacred point of reference for one's own moral or social policies; it is another to refuse to entertain – or imagine – what it might be for someone else to experience the world differently," he said.

"And behind this is the nagging problem of what happens to a culture in which, systematically, nothing is sacred," he said.

“The uncomfortable truth is that a desacralized world is not, as some fondly believe, a world without violence, but a world in which there can be no ultimate agreement about the worth of human or other beings."

That's true. But passing a law to punish people for non-slanderous things they say is worse than the offense the law seeks to forbid. Who gets to decide when a critic of this or that religion or religious person has been "thoughtlessly cruel"? Very many Muslims, as we know, are sensitive to the point of utter absurdity on this point. Modern Christians have been acculturated to being tolerant of all manner of blasphemy. It's not that Christians like it, or think it's insignificant; but they are products of a post-Enlightenment culture, which holds the right to free speech as a fundamental social value.

Personally, I hate it when artists blaspheme Christ, but I thank God that I live in a country where their right to do so is protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution. Because my right to worship as I see fit, and to criticize people and institutions that I want to criticize, is protected by the same Constitution. This is why US courts have overturned so-called "hate speech" laws, which are the secular liberal version of the old blasphemy laws.

I find it hard to believe that a man as intelligent as Dr. Williams doesn't grasp that the law he proposes would be used by Muslims to prosecute anyone who criticized their religion. Given that anyone who criticizes any aspect of Islam is bound to be thought of as a thoughtlessly cruel bigot by some Muslims, free and necessary speech will be quashed in the name of protecting the sensibilities of an obstreperous minority. No one who has genuine objections to Islam will want to risk being hauled into court on what amounts to a blasphemy charge. It will chill free expression.

If you're going to have the kind of informed and critical public debate necessary to the proper functioning of a liberal democracy, you have to put up with knuckleheads who abuse their right to free speech. Sanction them socially, but not in law. To do otherwise in this case is to yield to a dhimmi mentality.