Source: Religion News Service
LONDON, ENGLAND, August 6, 2002: Both the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England have announced their support for scrapping the English law against blasphemy and replacing it with a more generalized law against incitement to religious hatred. The present blasphemy law only covers material denying the truth of Christianity, the Bible or the Church of England’s Book of Common Prayer. Because it does not apply to non-Christian religions, for example, an effort in 1991 to bring Salman Rushdie’s controversial novel “The Satanic Verses” before the courts as a blasphemy to Islam failed. Prosecutions under the current law have been rare. In 1922 a publisher was successfully prosecuted for publishing a pamphlet comparing Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem with “a circus clown on a donkey.” Since then, the only other prosecution was in 1977 when the editor and publisher of Gay News were successfully prosecuted for publishing a poem suggesting Jesus had been an active homosexual. On appeal, the blasphemy convictions were upheld but the jail sentence was lifted. A committee of the House of Lords is currently considering whether the law should be replaced by a new statute aimed at making “incitement to religious hatred” illegal. The same law, part of English Common Law, is in effect in Trinidad, and possibly other former British colonies, and protects only Christianity.