During the March 2017 U.N. Human Rights Council, the International Humanist and Ethical Union and the Center for Inquiry organised an event on allegations of blasphemy in the digital age. The spread of social media has allowed individuals around the world to connect wi...
The paper discusses incidents where users have been accused of ‘blasphemous’ posts on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, and persecuted for it. That has occurred in : Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Kuwait, Mauritania, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Turkey, and the...
Why is the right to blaspheme legal in France if incitement to racial or religious hatred is prohibited? For a large segment of public opinion in the Islamic world (and not only Islamists), the cartoons of Charlie Hebdo painfully stab at the heart of Muslim identity. M...
In June 2011, the Broadway show The Book of Mormon received 14 nominations at the annual Tony awards (more than any other production) and won nine of them, including the coveted “Best Musical.” The script and lyrics are dirty and unfiltered. One song says “F*** you, Go...
In response to the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack, millions of French took to the streets on January 11th to defend the right to “blaspheme” or insult religion. But a few days later, French authorities cracked down on the comedian Dieudonné M’bala M’bala for writing on...
On Thursday, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan will visit Washington, D.C., to meet with President Barack Obama. Among a range of security issues, the focus will surely be the civil war raging next door in Syria. But President Obama should make sure to highlight a...
Washington, DC – Human Rights First today welcomed the statement by Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, secretary-general of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), affirming the 57-member organization will not seek a global ban on blasphemy or defaming religion through the U...
