Criminalizing religious critique may claim to protect belief, but often it has the opposite effect, instead undermining the same freedoms it is meant to defend. In places like northern Nigeria, the effects of this are clear.

A fire

A light

A bloom of life

Until a gust of wind

Turn the tides

Turn the eyes away

Let her fade away

You might go astray

I want to run

I want to bleed

I want to freeze

I want something to blame

But my cowardly heart

The world is ever evolving and freedom is seen as a guarantee. At least that's how it is perceived in the west. We Europeans often see our own struggles and achievements as global due to an eurocentric perspective of the world. When you make an effort, and it does not even need to be a great effort, to try to understand the rest of the world it is clear that our rights do not stretch out infinitely. BBC writes that a woman was recently burned alive by a mob for alleged blasphemy. The crazy thing is, these kinds of events aren't even that rare in northern Nigeria where the lines between religion and secular law are blurred. Freedom of speech is something the majority of countries worldwide have agreed upon when recognizing the list of human rights the United Nations has established. Yet violations of human rights happen all the time. I think the act of punishing someone for criticising religion is wrong when analysed from a human rights perspective.

Punishing someone for criticising religion can lead to the right to life and freedom of speech being violated. An article published by Madonna University writes that: in Nigeria the act of insulting a religion is at the federal level a criminal offence and in some of the northern states due to parallel shariah laws a capital offence punishable with death. This law is meant to protect religion by restricting oppression, but when you make it punishable with death it no longer becomes about protecting religion, more so scaring people into not speaking out if religion is present.

If criticising religion is illegal, you become very limited in what you can say. So while you could argue that it protects the freedom of belief and religion it also limits freedom of speech. It is difficult to decide which human right is more important than the other but the solution should never be to completely neglect the other. While restricting criticism to religion might ever so slightly protect the freedom of belief it completely and thoroughly violates the freedom of speech. In the absence of it, the right to express your beliefs and to speak about religion also diminishes. This in turn makes freedom of belief and religion uncertain and vulnerable. Therefore laws must consider both of these fundamental human rights.

Brown's article found that the imposition of the death penalty led to an increased permissible culture of violence and unlawful killings. When the state punishes people for talking ill against religion, those punishments become normalized. Then people feel that it is alright to act in the same way. The result has been many mob lynches just like the one in the BBC news article. Even if capital punishment, which is a violation of the right to life, isn't common it still sets an example to the people which often has the effect of more people dying – further violating the right to life. The act of punishing somebody for criticising religion is therefore bad because it leads to violence which potentially violates the right to life.

When people are unable to criticise religion, the religious institutes can't be held accountable which can lead to religion gaining immense power over the secular state. A clear example is the islamic courts in northern Nigeria. When state and religion become intertwined and you make that religion beyond question then they can govern the state however they want without fearing backlash. If a religion can impact the laws of a country, as in Nigeria and punish people based on religious law, then that could violate both the right to equality under law and the freedom of belief and religion. This is deeply concerning because when the laws are based on religion individuals are forced to adapt to the religion or otherwise be punished. The individual may lose the ability to follow their own religion if it conflicts with the religious laws.

The act of punishing someone for criticising religion can potentially lead to violation of a number of human rights such as the right to live, freedom of speech, right to equality before law and even freedom of belief and religion, which it was ironically supposed to protect. Therefore it is simply wrong. I think it is very important that we who have freedom of speech use it and preserve it so that our situation does not end up like in Nigeria. We must remember that human rights are not guaranteed. We all have a responsibility to keep them alive – so please protect your interests and start using them by expressing yourselves, just like I am doing now.

Dag Lönnberg