Justifying blasphemy laws: freedom of expression, public morals, and international human rights law

In its General Comment No. 34 dealing with freedom of expression, the United Nations Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) rejected the idea that a blasphemy law could ever be human-rights compliant, unless its function was to prevent incitement to religious or racial hatred. This is a widely shared view t...

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Главный автор: Cox, Neville 1971- (Автор)
Формат: Электронный ресурс Статья
Язык:Английский
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Опубликовано: Cambridge Univ. Press [2020]
В: Journal of law and religion
Год: 2020, Том: 35, Выпуск: 1, Страницы: 33-60
Нормированные ключевые слова (последовательности):B Vereinte Nationen, Internationales Menschenrechtskomitee / International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966 Dezember 19) / Хуление Бога / Свобода слова / Общественный порядок
Индексация IxTheo:AD Социология религии
XA Право
Другие ключевые слова:B Public Morality
B Pakistan
B freedom of expression
B Blasphemy
B Ireland
B Human Rights
Online-ссылка: Volltext (Verlag)
Volltext (doi)
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Итог:In its General Comment No. 34 dealing with freedom of expression, the United Nations Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) rejected the idea that a blasphemy law could ever be human-rights compliant, unless its function was to prevent incitement to religious or racial hatred. This is a widely shared view that is consistently endorsed when any international blasphemy controversy (such as that involving the Danish Cartoons in 2005) arises. This article assesses the legitimacy of this view. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) permits freedom of expression to be limited inter alia in the name of public morality, provided that the law in question is also necessary to achieve this end. This article argues that because a blasphemy law can be a response to a public moral vision; therefore a blasphemy law can serve a legitimate purpose insofar as human rights law is concerned. It is further submitted that whereas some blasphemy laws are unacceptably draconian, it is not inherently impossible for such a law to represent a proportionate response to a public morals concern. Thus, the conclusion from the UNHRC is not warranted by the text of the ICCPR. Moreover, there is a risk that, in reaching this conclusion the committee is evincing an exclusively secularist worldview in its interpretation of the ICCPR that undermines its claim to universality.
ISSN:2163-3088
Второстепенные работы:Enthalten in: Journal of law and religion
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1017/jlr.2020.11