The Complex Relationship Between Blasphemy and Freedom of Expression

Abstract: The relationship between blasphemy, freedom of expression and freedom of religion constitutes one of the most controversial areas in which the ability of pluralistic societies to reconcile profoundly different convictions without turning dissent into repression is put to the test. While freedom of religion protects every individual’s right to profess, change, manifest or refrain from professing a religion or belief, more problematic is the claim that such protection should be extended to religions as systems of belief, thereby shielding them from criticism, satire or even deliberately irreverent expression. Blasphemy laws still in force in numerous jurisdictions demonstrate how unstable this boundary remains, with penalties ranging from fines and imprisonment to, in some countries, capital punishment. This article critically examines the distinction between protecting the individual believer and protecting religious feelings, asking whether religious convictions can be afforded protection from offence without disproportionately restricting freedom of expression. The fundamental question, therefore, is not whether blasphemy is socially appropriate or morally acceptable, but whether the law should afford religious convictions greater protection from criticism and offence than that granted to other philosophical, political and ideological beliefs.

Keywords: #Blasphemy #FreedomOfExpression #FreedomOfReligion #FreedomOfConscience #ReligiousFeelings #HumanRights #FundamentalRights #ReligiousPluralism #BlasphemyLaws #Religion #Secularism #Tolerance #Satire #FreedomOfThought #IncitementToHatred #ReligiousDiscrimination #InternationalLaw #CharlieHebdo #SimoneMorganti #EthicaSocietas #EthicaSocietasReview #ScientificJournal #Humanities #SocialSciences #EthicaSocietasUPLI

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When Offence Encounters the Sacred

The sheer number of religions, denominations and belief systems in the world, together with the depth of their influence on individual and collective life, makes it almost inevitable that public discourse about religion may, in certain circumstances, offend someone’s sensibilities. The relationship between blasphemy and freedom of expression thus risks becoming progressively unbalanced in favour of a third element—the protection of religious feelings—raising a question that has shaped the relationship between authority, faith and freedom for centuries: to what extent is it legitimate to sacrifice freedom of expression on the altar of politeness, respect or protection from offence?

Underlying laws that punish blasphemy, albeit in widely differing formulations and degrees of severity, is the idea that freedom of expression may be subject to limitations when certain forms of expression are deemed seriously offensive to a religion, its symbols or the beliefs of its adherents. The problem, however, arises from the difficulty of determining what properly constitutes blasphemy and where criticism, satire, irreverence or ridicule cease to belong within the sphere of freedom of expression and become legally punishable conduct.

This conceptual indeterminacy is inevitably reflected in legislation. So-called blasphemy laws continue to exist in numerous jurisdictions, either explicitly or through provisions designed to protect religious feelings. The penalties prescribed vary enormously, ranging from fines and imprisonment to, in the most severe jurisdictions, capital punishment. International surveys differ as to the precise number of states concerned, partly because of differences in how a blasphemy law is defined, but they nevertheless confirm the considerable global prevalence of such provisions.

There is also an even more disturbing dimension, one that does not properly belong to blasphemy legislation but rather to violence exercised outside state institutions: an accusation of having offended a religion can become the pretext for assaults, lynchings or killings perpetrated by individuals or groups claiming to take the place of state justice. In Pakistan, for example, Human Rights Watch has documented numerous episodes of collective violence and killings following mere allegations of blasphemy.

The terrorist attack against the offices of Charlie Hebdo in January 2015 represents, in a different context, an extreme manifestation of this logic: not the enforcement of a state law against blasphemy, but the claim to punish through private violence an expression regarded as intolerably offensive to religion.

Freedom of Religion and the Right Not to Be Offended Are Not the Same Thing

The starting point for understanding the issue is the principle of freedom of thought, conscience and religion, recognised by Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and subsequently by Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The latter recognises every individual’s right to have or adopt a religion or belief of their choice and to manifest it, individually or in community with others, in public or in private. Freedom of expression is likewise protected by Article 19 of the same Covenant.

Freedom of religion, however, does not necessarily entail a right for religion itself to be shielded from criticism. It is precisely within this distinction that one of the central issues of the debate lies.

In its General Comment No. 34 on Article 19 of the Covenant, the United Nations Human Rights Committee adopted a particularly significant position, stating that prohibitions on displays of lack of respect for a religion or other belief system, including blasphemy laws, are incompatible with the Covenant except in the specific circumstances envisaged by Article 20(2), concerning advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence. The Committee further specifies that such provisions may not be used to prevent or punish criticism of religious leaders or commentary on religious doctrine and tenets of faith.

The distinction is fundamental: protecting a person from discrimination or violence because of their religion is not the same as protecting their religion from criticism.

Religion, Belief and Ideology

Those who believe that blasphemy should be punishable are, numerically speaking, in considerable company: laws that directly or indirectly sanction forms of offence against religion continue to affect a substantial proportion of the world’s population.

Yet it is precisely this widespread presence that makes it necessary to examine the distinction between protecting freedom of religion and protecting religious feelings.

A first critical argument concerns the very nature of the convictions that the law should protect. Religion can undoubtedly contribute profoundly to the construction of individual and collective identity, and it would therefore be reductive to deny its identity-forming dimension. This does not mean, however, that its propositions, doctrines and institutions should be removed from public debate.

In this respect, religious systems share a fundamental characteristic with philosophical, political and ideological systems: they offer interpretations of reality, propose values and models of behaviour, and may be objects of adherence, disagreement, criticism and transformation.

Christianity and Islam are certainly historical and anthropological phenomena different from socialism, liberalism or conservatism. From the standpoint of freedom of public debate, however, the question remains the same: why should a belief become legally immune from criticism by virtue of its religious nature?

Criticism—and in some cases even ridicule—of political ideologies is ordinarily tolerated in democratic societies. If every expression perceived as offensive towards a system of beliefs were instead to become unlawful, the same criterion would logically have to be extended to capitalism, socialism, liberalism, conservatism, progressivism and every other worldview sufficiently important to the identity of those who embrace it.

The result would be paradoxical: freedom of expression formally recognised, but substantially curtailed by the impossibility of offending the sensibilities of others.

The Problem of Religious Pluralism

A second difficulty arises from the extraordinarily large number of religions and belief systems in existence, a circumstance that makes it extremely difficult to construct uniform legal protection for religious feelings.

The problem becomes still more evident when the fundamental propositions of one religion are incompatible with those of another. Christianity, for example, recognises Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ and the Son of God, whereas Judaism does not recognise his messianic status in the terms of Christian theology; Islam, in turn, recognises Jesus as a prophet but rejects the Christian doctrine of his divinity.

These differences are entirely legitimate and inherent in religious pluralism. Yet this very incompatibility demonstrates how problematic it would be to establish a general right to have one’s beliefs remain unchallenged: the sincere profession of one person’s faith may inevitably contain a denial of what another person considers sacred.

Pluralism therefore cannot mean the absence of contradiction. On the contrary, it means the ability to coexist with mutually incompatible beliefs without turning disagreement into discrimination or violence.

Can God Be a Victim of Blasphemy?

There is, finally, a third argument, deliberately provocative and more philosophical and theological than legal in nature.

The major monotheistic religions attribute to God characteristics that include, albeit according to differing theological conceptions, omnipotence and omniscience. If this premise is accepted, it seems peculiar to imagine that the intervention of human criminal law should be necessary to protect the divine from human words.

A being who created the universe, parted seas according to sacred narratives and determines humanity’s ultimate destiny could hardly be considered vulnerable to the irreverent speech of an individual.

The problem can be framed, provocatively, through three hypotheses. The first is that God exists but is not offended by human words, or in any event does not require the protection of state legal systems. The second is that God exists, does indeed regard a particular act as blasphemous and, according to religious beliefs that envisage judgement beyond earthly life, possesses the means and the time to judge it. The third, certainly more radical and incompatible with the religious premise, is that the deity alleged to have been offended does not exist and consequently cannot be the victim of any offence.

Determining which of these hypotheses is true—or whether none of them is—clearly lies beyond the scope of these pages. Nor is the purpose of this discussion to celebrate or encourage blasphemy.

Rather, the provocation serves to highlight an essential point: when legal systems punish blasphemy, what they concretely protect is not God, but the relationship human beings have with what they regard as sacred.

From Protecting God to Protecting People

It is precisely here that the nature of the problem changes.

If the victim of the offence is not the deity but the believer, then the law must concern itself not with blasphemy as such, but with the boundary between offensive expression and violations of individual rights: discrimination, threats, defamation, or incitement to hatred or violence.

International human rights law provides a particularly useful distinction. Freedom of expression is not absolute and may be subject to restrictions prescribed by law and necessary for the protection of the rights of others. At the same time, Article 20(2) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights requires the prohibition of advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred where it constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence.

There is therefore no necessary choice between a society in which anything can be said without consequence and one in which religious feelings must be protected from criticism. There is an intermediate space, far more difficult to define, in which the law protects people from violence, discrimination and incitement to hatred without turning their beliefs into legally unchallengeable dogmas.

European case law likewise demonstrates how complex this balance remains. The European Court of Human Rights has historically recognised that states enjoy a certain margin of appreciation in balancing freedom of expression against the protection of religious peace, while also affirming that the Convention does not, as such, guarantee an autonomous right to the protection of religious feelings.

Free to Offend or Free from Offence?

The question posed in the title can therefore be reformulated. Should a liberal democracy guarantee the right to offend, or the right not to be offended?

Probably neither formulation accurately describes the problem. Freedom of expression does not exist in order to confer upon individuals a specific right to offend, just as freedom of religion does not necessarily confer a general right to be protected from the experience of offence.

What a pluralistic society should guarantee, rather, is the possibility of expressing beliefs, criticising and challenging them, and even representing them through satire, without allowing disagreement to become discrimination, threats or incitement to violence.

From this perspective, the “offence” of blasphemy retains an unusual characteristic when compared with the traditional structure of a legal offence: the deity identified as the target of the offence does not directly manifest any legally ascertainable harm, while the injury actually invoked necessarily concerns human beings, communities and feelings.

Over the past centuries, no deity has appeared before a court to declare itself offended. Human beings have determined which words should be regarded as blasphemous, which feelings deserve protection and which penalties should accompany their violation, with some contemporary legal systems going so far as to provide for extremely severe sanctions.

And it is perhaps precisely this observation that restores the issue to its most genuinely political and legal dimension: the question is not how far God should be protected from human beings, but how far human beings should be protected from power exercised in the name of God.

Essential References

United Nations. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948, Article 18.

United Nations. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 1966, Articles 18, 19 and 20.

United Nations Human Rights Committee. General Comment No. 34 – Article 19: Freedoms of Opinion and Expression, CCPR/C/GC/34, 2011, particularly § 48.

European Convention on Human Rights, Articles 9 and 10.

European Court of Human Rights. Otto-Preminger-Institut v. Austria, 20 September 1994.

U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. Respecting Rights? Measuring the World’s Blasphemy Laws.

Humanists International. Freedom of Thought Report 2024, 2025.

Human Rights Watch. “A Conspiracy to Grab the Land”: Exploiting Pakistan’s Blasphemy Laws for Blackmail and Profit, 9 June 2025.