For Dan, whose friend was charged with blasphemy.
Religion is the true origin and original form of all institutions – Rene Girard
The good thing about blasphemy laws is this: they are explicit. You know where you stand. In the absence of explicit blasphemy laws any person with power over his or her fellows can convict them of this heinous crime.
The Origin Of Government
Rene Girard was an anthropologist, not a religious scholar. He recorded what he observed in primitive societies: Sacrificial rituals came first. Laws replaced rituals. Governors replaced priests.
Then he did what scientists do: he proposed a theory to match the data. “Religion is the true origin and original form of all cultural institutions,” including modern governments, he wrote in I See Satan Fall Like Lightning.
Then he did what academics do: he mocked his adversaries. ‘Enlightenment rationalists conceive the first humans as so many little Descartes, who must have conceived in abstract fashion, purely theoretically at first, the institutions they wished to establish.’ Funny stuff.
If Girard is right then modern governors must from time to time speak and act like shamans. They must prosecute threats as blasphemies. So what are blasphemy laws, how are they prosecuted, and why don’t we have them anymore?
Good Ol’ Blasphemy Laws
Pakistan has the world’s strictest blasphemy laws, according to the Wiki. The first purpose of those laws is to protect the authority of the state whose religion and governance are one and the same.
Blasphemy never just attacks god. It is ALWAYS also attacks the state. People cannot long abide anarchy, so obviously protecting the state is a good thing. Laws prohibiting blasphemy preserve the state and state religion which are the bedrocks of stable society. The state is sacred, that is, it exists by and for sacrifice. We all gotta blow a little steam now and again, so obviously it is good to know who the state allows the steam to blow on.
Pakistan does not put blasphemers to death. They imprison them or turn them over to a mob. “No judicial execution has been carried out under these laws. Many of those accused and their lawyers have become victims of lynchings or street vigilantism,” says the Wiki. About 2000 people have been accused in the last 50 years. About 100 were killed out of court before final verdict.
Here are four crimes Pakistan’s blasphemy laws prohibit:
- Misuse of titles reserved for certain holy personages
- Defiling places of worship
- Making any gesture with the deliberate intention of wounding religious feelings
- Use of derogatory remarks in respect of holy personages.
Obviously blasphemy laws are good because they provide a safe space for the chosen ones and an unsafe space for the corrupt.
What Say The Accused?
The accused proclaim innocence, of course. The Wiki backs them up when it says blasphemy laws are ‘overwhelmingly being used to persecute minorities and settle personal vendettas.’ Here are the stories of three recently accused of blasphemy in Pakistan.
Five years ago Ashfaq Masih was accused of blasphemy and sentenced to death. He sits in prison still. His accuser: a client who did not want to pay for a motorcycle repair and leveled a charge to dodge the bill.
In July 2013, Shagufta and Shafqat Emmanuel were arrested on false charges of blasphemy. After eight years on death row, separated from each other and from their four children, and tortured often, they were finally released on June 3rd, 2021.
Go West Young Man
The minimum conditions to prosecute blasphemy are: 1) a state religion established by the deity; 2) the deity’s chief spokesman who can point out the anti-deity; 3) a single person who embodies both the state and its religion; and 4) crimes that jeopardize society by challenging the god-state.
Western countries lack those, or so I have heard.
Why do westerners lack explicit blasphmeny laws? Because for the last couple thousand years they constantly reminded themselves that they executed an innocent man on a charge of blasphemy and they should never do it again. The message eventually sunk in, according to Girard.
A nation that separates church from state has opposition parties, legislators, grand buildings, and legal proceedings. A nation with a conjoined church-state has anti-deities, shamans, temples, and rituals.
Harvard Says “Not Insurrection”
Trigger warning: The Elites recently cast doubt on a proposition they previously declared infallible dogma. Maybe it is better to not know. Back out now or risk your salvation!
‘Why did Trump supporters storm the US Capitol on Jan 6?’ ask Harvard elites? The rioters are not insurrectionists Harvard’s enlightened ones say today, though until yesterday we were required to give religious assent to the belief that they were. Rather, they are simply misguided worshippers of an anti-deity named Trump.
Are we really allowed now to disbelieve The Insurrection? Harvard’s shamans say yes. It was not insurrection the spirit guides say, but something else. Was it blasphemy? Let’s hear from our religious and political leaders.
The Anti-Diety
Wilton Gregory, the Cardinal Archbishop of Washington, D.C., identifies as a devout Catholic and is the senior religious figure in that city. What he says regarding public morality matters. Sorry snake handlers and crystal gazers, like it or not, for better or worse, Gregory’s office carries a lot of clout.
All Are Welcome in DC’s Catholic churches, or so you might think when observing the multitude of banners proclaiming that message. No Humans Are Illegal, Gregory assures us, even if they hold unallowed opinions.
Except for one: the antichrist.
Cardinal Gregory clued us in to the antichrist’s identity when he said of Trump, “I find it baffling and reprehensible that any Catholic facility would allow itself to be so egregiously misused and manipulated in a fashion that violates our religious principles, which call us to defend the rights of all people even those with whom we might disagree *.”
(* Note that Gregory said this on the occasion Trump visited the shrine of Pope John Paul II to sign an executive order on free practice of religion.)
God’s spokesperson denounces the anti-deity. Check.
Shamans and Temples
Nancy Pelosi, who identifies as a devout Catholic, clutched her gavel on January 3rd, 2021 and proclaimed, “As Speaker of the House, it is my great honor to preside over this sacred ritual of renewal, as we gather under the dome of this temple of Democracy to begin the 117th Congress.”
Shamans-Governors presiding over sacred rituals. Check. Two down.
Temples to the state religion. Yep. Three down, one to go.
Blasphemers
A few days later on January 6th, 2021 she said, “To those who strove to deter us from our responsibility, you have failed. To those who engaged in the gleeful desecration of this, our temple of democracy – American democracy – justice will be done. Today, January 6, is the Feast of the Epiphany. On this day of revelation, let us pray that this instigation to violence will provide an epiphany for our country to heal. In that spirit of healing, I invoke the Song of St. Francis – I usually do – St. Francis is the patron saint of my city of San Francisco.’
The high priestess condemns blasphemers who desecrate our temples, refer to the anti-deity by the sacred title ‘President’, and promises to heal our land by sprinkling it with their blood.
The accused assure us they are not insurrectionists blasphemers. Check.
Check, check, and check. If it looks like blasphemy, smells like blasphemy, and walks like blasphemy, it might be blasphemy.
(And remember, this essay is only possible because Harvard gave us permission to doubt insurrection.)
Which Would You Rather?
Which would you rather: Trumpers jailed for trespassing, or Trumpers accused of blasphemy? Be honest now. Murder, mockery, desecration, devil worship … these are the sort of crimes that inspire the outrage we are all required to feel. Trespassing is in an entirely different and ontologically lesser league!
Jail a cancer ridden grandma for trespassing and what do you benefit? Nothing. You miss even the pleasure of her suffering; out of sight, out of mind. But denounce her for desecration and release her to the mob, well now, that would really be something to see!
I Wonder
I wonder why the heaviest handed politicians are Catholic? I suspect their understanding of how to use rituals to control populations has something to do with it.
There exists a certain type of right wing kuku bird who believes the state has a right and duty to recognize and promote true religion. They are called Catholic Integralists, often dismissed as nutballs, and invariably consider themselves right-of-center conservatives. I wonder whether they notice that Gregory and Pelosi embody their ideal style of government?
I wonder whether leftish progressives notice that the best rationale for joining church and state as their glorious leaders do comes from the mouths of right wing kuku birds.
I do not wonder whether Rene Girard would be surprised that our government is a disguised religion that simply calls blasphemy something else. He would not.