“Are there significant numbers of non-Muslim majority countries that have anti-blasphemy laws or is this largely a problem confined to the Muslim majority world?”
Source/Credit: CNS News
By Penny Starr | August 10, 2016
At a press briefing to release the 2015 International Religious Freedom Report at the State Department on Wednesday, David Saperstein, Middle East ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom, told a reporter who asked if blasphemy laws were mainly a problem in Muslim countries that the United States still has those laws “on the books” in five states.
“Are there significant numbers of non-Muslim majority countries that have anti-blasphemy laws or is this largely a problem confined to the Muslim majority world?” the reporter asked.
Saperstein referred the reporter to a July 29, 2016 Pew Research report on the countries around the globe that outlaw apostasy and blasphemy but then cited laws in the United States, which are not included in the Pew report.
“They issued a report recently, and you can see a list of every country in the world that comprise that quarter of the countries that have blasphemy laws,” Saperstein said. “And there are still five states in the United States that have blasphemy laws on the books.”
Based on 2014 data, the Pew report stated, “About a quarter of the world’s countries and territories (26%) had anti-blasphemy laws or policies, and that more than one-in-ten (13%) nations had laws or policies penalizing apostasy. The legal punishments for such transgressions vary from fines to death.”
This does not include the United States, according to Pew.
TOA: Massachusetts, Michigan, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Wyoming, and Pennsylvania have laws that make reference to blasphemy. Some US states still have blasphemy laws on the books from the founding days.
In 2012, the Los Angeles Times reported on blasphemy laws in the United States:
“Blasphemy laws remain on the books in some states, though they are dead letters,” the Times reported, citing one law in Massachusetts.
Read original post here: USA: 5 States in the U.S. Still Have Blasphemy Laws ‘on the Books’, Says State Dept. Official
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