A year of blasphemy

Eric Posner wrote in Slate that we ought to consider that other societies believe that “free speech must yield to other values and the need for order.” Anthea Butler, a professor at Penn, defended calls for the arrest of the man who made the film, suggesting that it had “inflamed” people across the globe, putting Americans at risk. Garrett Epps wrote that blasphemy is not the “essence of free speech” and that other nations understand freedom differently than we do. Professor Peter Spiro reacted to the film by suggesting that “international norms” about hate speech should prevail over our relatively absolutist free speech values.

We should address such views, not ignore them. But as we consider them — as we evaluate whether anti-blasphemy laws will ever be consistent with the modern American values embodied in our First Amendment precedents — we should examine what the competing values truly are. What are the “other values” which other societies believe outweigh free speech? What sorts of things “inflame” people in those societies? If other societies understand free expression differently than we do, how do they understand it? What “international norms” are emerging on blasphemy?

I decided to try to answer those questions by looking at how the nations of the world have treated blasphemy during one year: October 2011 through September 2012. In other words, I decided to examine how one year reflected the competing values concerning free speech and blasphemy.