By the way, some religions are offended if yoy say that Jesus was not the son of God. Some others are offended if you say he was. So what should be done, then? Not say anything at all? But what if the ordinary worship of the believers of religion #1 offend religion #2, then ?

All we need is a handful of nice and clever believers, people who understand the importance of a secular state, to test this in court.

With all due respect Mr Mehta,

You must be joking.

Common sense in Ireland is about as common as Oxygen on the moon.

The Irish are splended at making laws…

But enforcing and obeying them is another story.

I’ll tell you why the Irish Politicians are pressing a blasphemy law.

They are afraid of someone offending the 30,000 and rapidly growing population of Muslims and thus giving life to another Danish cartoon style Jihadist temper tantrum.

It’s that plain and simple. The Irish could give two hoots about someone disrespecting Hindus, Buddhists, Protestants or even Catholics.

As far as the Jewish faith goes, the Irish populace encourages anti-semitism, and the government passively looks the other way when numerous Palestinians hold regular anti-Israeli demonstrations.

After this “so-called” law is passed wait and see if my predictions come to fruition.

Last week, creators of a TV show called Father Ted decided that if the law passed, they would issue a statement “blaspheming all the major religions in Ireland, including Christianity and Islam.”

“down with this sort of thing”
“careful now!”

I do think that if it passes the pastafarians, the Jedis, the satanists, the wiccans and all the other tiny joke or fringe religions should just make as much of a nuisance of themselves as possible.

Certainly the pastafarians could have much fun sueing various ministers for blasphemy against the FSM.

And good on the writer of Father Ted. It was always an excellent show and its nice to see they still have the mojo to say the right things.

Most laws are enforced selectively so I doubt anyone is going to get sued for saying, “Religion Sucks!” or “Jesus Blows Monkey Balls!”.

I think what is happening here is a way for the various religious institutions in Ireland, currently going through a number of scandalous child-abuse scandals, to stifle all debate. If you try to call them on their deplorable actions, they’ll find some way to say that you’re blaspheming them and have *you* charged instead.

Since you’ve been charged *you* are now the bad guy for attacking and blaspheming their beliefs, because it should be obvious to everyone that even daring to say anything bad about a priest or nun is tantamount to attacking the religion itself, they can play the “poor embattled church under constant harassment by militant liberals” angle. Was that sarcasm, or the way the world should be according to religious people? I’ll let you decide.

Although I think its a sad day when the Irish government has taken a page from the utterly oppressive Shariah Law handbook by playing along with this foolishness.