Abstract
Blasphemy law (BL) has become a central issue for the international community in various parts of the world in the last three decades. In almost every case involving the BL, especially in Muslim countries, such as Pakistan, Malaysia, and Indonesia, they are always responded with violence or threats of attack that cause many victims, loss of homes, damage to places of worship, evictions, stigma of being heretical, severe punishments, or extra-judicial killings. When international human rights law (IHLR) and declaration of the right to peace are adopted by the international community, at the same time, the number of violence related to the application of BL continues to increase. This paper aims to examine the ambiguity of the concept of the BL in Pakistan, Indonesia, and Malaysia, and how its lead to the weak of enforcement that creates social injustice and inequality. Then, referring to Galtung’s theory of structural violence and other experts of peace studies, this paper argues that blasphemy law should be included as a form of structural violence. Therefore its challenges these States to reform their BL in which its provisions accommodate the state’s neutrality and content high legal standards. Thus, through guarantee the fully enjoyment of human rights for everyone may support the States to achieve sustainable peace.
Acknowledgments
We thank to Dr. Eakpant Pindhavanija for reviewing the first draft of this manuscript and anonymous reviewer who’s provided helpful comments on the earlier drafts. All remaining errors are mine.
References
Amnesty International. 2014. Prosecuting Beliefs Indonesia’s Blasphemy Laws, Index. ASA 21/018/2014.Search in Google Scholar
An-Na’im, A. 2008. Islam and the Secular State, 324. USA: Harvard University Press.10.4159/9780674033764Search in Google Scholar
An-Na’im, A. 2011. Islam, State and Politics: Separate but Interactive. brookings. edu, January, 29.Search in Google Scholar
Baumgartner, C. 2013. “Blasphemy as Violence: Trying to Understand the Kind of Injury that can be Inflicted by Acts and Artefacts that are Construed as Blasphemy.” Journal of Religion in Europe 6 (1): 35–63, https://doi.org/10.1163/18748929-00601007.Search in Google Scholar
Benson, P. 2008. “El Campo: Faciality and Structural Violence in Farm Labor Camps.” Cultural Anthropology (Wiley-Blackwell) 23 (4): 589–629, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1360.2008.00020.x.Search in Google Scholar
Bennett, G. L. 2009. “Defamation of Religions: The End of Pluralism?” Emory International Law Review 23 (1): 69–84.Search in Google Scholar
Berman, M. L. 2011. “From Health Care Reform to Public Health Reform.” Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics 39 (3): 328–39, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1748-720x.2011.00603.x.Search in Google Scholar
Bleich, E. 2012. “Defining and Researching Islamophobia.” Review of Middle East Studies 46 (2): 180–9, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41940895.10.1017/S2151348100003402Search in Google Scholar
Burhani, A. N. 2014. “Hating the Ahmadiyya: the Place of “Heretics” in Contemporary Indonesian Muslim Society.” Contemporary Islam 8 (2): 133–52, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11562-014-0295-x.Search in Google Scholar
Butt, S. 2010. “Islam, the State and the Constitutional Court in Indonesia.” Pacific Rim Law & Policy Journal 19: 279.Search in Google Scholar
Cannie, H., and D. Voorhoof. 2011. “The Abuse Clause and Freedom of Expression in the European Human Rights Convention: an Added Value for Democracy and Human Rights Protection?” Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights 29 (1): 54–83, https://doi.org/10.1177/016934411102900105.Search in Google Scholar
Chapman, A. R. 1996. “Violations Approach for Monitoring the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.” Human Rights Quarterly 18, 23–66. The Johns Hopkins University Press.10.4324/9781315199955-13Search in Google Scholar
Cohen-Almagor, R. 2009. “Holocaust Denial Is a Form of Hate Speech.” Amsterdam LF 2: 33, https://doi.org/10.37974/alf.96.Search in Google Scholar
Colbran, N. 2010. “Realities and Challenges in Realising Freedom of Religion or Belief in Indonesia.” International Journal of Human Rights 14: 678–704, https://doi.org/10.1080/13642980903155166.Search in Google Scholar
Crouch, M. A. 2011. “Law and Religion in Indonesia: The Constitutional Court and the Blasphemy Law.” Asian Journal of Comparative Law 7: 1–46, https://doi.org/10.1017/s2194607800000582.Search in Google Scholar
Crouch, M. A. 2012. “The Indonesia Blasphemy Case: Affirming the Legality of the Blasphemy.” Oxford Journal of Law and Religion 1 (2): 514–8, https://doi.org/10.1093/ojlr/rws025.Search in Google Scholar
Durham, C., and B. Scharffs. 2010. Law and Religion: National, International, and Comparative Perspective, 121–75. New York: Wolter Kluwer Law & Business. Aspen Publishers.Search in Google Scholar
Farmer, P. E., B. Nizeye, S. Stulac, and S. Keshavjee. 2006. “Structural Violence and Clinical Medicine.” PLoS Medicine 3 (10): e449, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.0030449.Search in Google Scholar
Fischer, D. 2007. “Peace as a Self-Regulating Process.” In Handbook of Peace and Conflict Studies, edited by C. Webel, and J. Galtung, 188. London: Routledge.10.4324/9780203089163.ch13Search in Google Scholar
Fiss, J., and J. G. Kestenbaum. 2017. Respecting Rights? Measuring the World’s Blasphemy Laws. https://www.uscirf.gov/sites/default/files/Blasphemy%20laws%20Report.pdf (accessed December 9, 2019).Search in Google Scholar
Freedman, S. G. 2009. A Man’s Existentialism, Construed as Blasphemy. The New York Times.Search in Google Scholar
Galtung, J. 1969. “Violence, Peace, and Peace Research.” Journal of Peace Research 6 (3): 167–91, https://doi.org/10.1177/002234336900600301.Search in Google Scholar
Galtung, J. 1990. “Cultural Violence.” Journal of Peace Research 27 (3): 291–305, https://doi.org/10.1177/0022343390027003005.Search in Google Scholar
Galtung, J. 1993. “Kulturelle Gewalt.” 43 Der Burger im Staat.Search in Google Scholar
Galtung, J., and T. Höivik. 1971. “Structural and Direct Violence: A Note on Operationalization.” Journal of Peace Research 8 (1): 73–6, https://doi.org/10.1177/002234337100800108.Search in Google Scholar
Gliszczyńska-Grabias, A. 2017. “The European Union, Antisemitism, and the Politics of Denial by R. Amy Elman.” Antisemitism Studies 1 (1): 216–22.10.2979/antistud.1.1.08Search in Google Scholar
Graham, L. B. 2009. “Defamation of Religions: The End of Pluralism.” Emory International Law Review 23: 69–84.Search in Google Scholar
Grewal, B. S. 2003. “Johan Galtung: Positive and Negative Peace.” School of Social Science, Auckland University of Technology 30: 23–6.Search in Google Scholar
Hansmann, H., and J. M. Quigley. 1982. Population Heterogeneity and the Sociogenesis of Homicide. Faculty Scholarship Series. 5045. Also available at https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/fss_papers/5045.Search in Google Scholar
Hervik, P. 2012. The Danish Muhammad Cartoon Conflict. Sweden: Malmö Institute for Studies of Migration, Diversity and Welfare (MIM) and Department of International Migration and Ethnic Relations (IMER), Malmö University.Search in Google Scholar
Horton, J. 1993. “The Satanic Verses Controversy: A Brief Introduction.” In Liberalism, Multiculturalism and Toleration, 104–13. London: Palgrave Macmillan.10.1007/978-1-349-22887-4_7Search in Google Scholar
Kermani, S. 2018. Acquitted of Blasphemy and Living in Fear in Pakistan. Islamabad: BBC News. December 9, 2018. Also availbale at http://www.bbc.com.news.world-asia-46465247.Search in Google Scholar
Khan, A. M. 2003. “Persecution of the Ahmadiyya Community in Pakistan: An Analysis under International Law and International Relations.” Harvard Human Rights Journal 16: 127.Search in Google Scholar
Khory, K. R. 2012. Global Migration: Challenges in the Twenty. New York: First Century Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN: 9781137007124.10.1057/9781137007124Search in Google Scholar
Kuznetsov, D. 2012. “Freedom Collide: Freedom of Expression and Freedom of Religion in Russia in Comparative Perspective.” Russian Law Journal II (2): 75.10.17589/2309-8678-2014-2-2-75-100Search in Google Scholar
Malešević, S. 2010. The Sociology of War and Violence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511777752.Search in Google Scholar
Marshall, P. A., and N. Shea. 2011. Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes Are Choking Freedom Worldwide. USA: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199812264.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Menchik, J. 2016. Islam and Democracy in Indonesia: Tolerance without Liberalism, xv+207. England: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9781316344446Search in Google Scholar
Modood, T., R. Hansen, E. Bleich, B. O’Leary, and J. H. Carens. 2006. “The Danish Cartoon Affair: Free Speech, Racism, Islamism, and Integration.” International Migration 44: 3–62, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2435.2006.00386.x.Search in Google Scholar
Nash, D., and C. Bakalis. 2007. “Incitement to Religious Hatred and the Symbolic: How Will the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006 Work.” Liverpool Law Review 28 (3): 349–75, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10991-007-9023-4.Search in Google Scholar
Neumayer, E. 2006. “Do International Human Rights Treaties Improve Respect for Human Rights?” Conferences on New Political Economy 23: 69–104, https://doi.org/10.1628/186183406786118516.Search in Google Scholar
Octora, R. 2016. “Renewal of Criminal Law: Draft of Indonesian Criminal Code, Spirit of Codification and its Effects on Law Harmonization.” Jurnal Hukum & Pembangunan 46 (3): 366, https://doi.org/10.21143/jhp.vol46.no3.96.Search in Google Scholar
Pratiwi, C. S. 2019. The Permissible Scope of Legal Limitation on Freedom of Religion or Belief (FoRB) and Freedom of Expression (FoE) under International Human Rights Law (IHRL): The Study of Blasphemy Cases in Indonesia (January 9, 2019). Also available at SSRN https://ssrn.com/abstract=3312715, https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3312715.Search in Google Scholar
Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. 2012. Laws Penalizing Blasphemy, Apostasy and Defamation of Religion Are Widespread. http://www.pewforum.org/2012/11/21/laws-penalizingblasphemy-apostasy-and- defamation-of-religion (accessed Nov 2019).Search in Google Scholar
Pool, R., and W. Geissler. 2005. Medical Anthropology. Buckingham: Open University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Prud’homme, J.-A. 2010. Policing Belief: The Impact of Blasphemy Laws on Human Rights. A Freedom House Special Report. Freedomhouse.org. Also available at https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/2020-02/Archived_Special_Report_FH_Policing_Belief_Full.pdf.Search in Google Scholar
Puddington, A. 2007. “The 2006 Freedom House Survey: The Pushback against Democracy.” Journal of Democracy 18 (2): 125–37.10.1353/jod.2007.0034Search in Google Scholar
Rynning, S., and C. H. Schmidt. 2006. “Muhammad Cartoons in Denmark: From Freedom of Speech to Denmarks Biggest International Crisis since 1945.” Revista UNISCI (11): 11–21.Search in Google Scholar
Temperman, J. 2011. “Freedom of Expression and Religious Sensitivities in Pluralist Societies; Facing the Challenge of Extreme Speech.” BYU Law Review 2011 (3): 729, https://digitalcommons.law.byu.edu/lawreview/vol2011/iss3/7.Search in Google Scholar
Tsagarousianou, R. 2016. “Muslims in Public and Media Discourse in Western Europe: The Reproduction of Aporia and Exclusion.” In Representations of Islam in the News: A Cross-Cultural Analysis Lanham, edited by S. Mertens, and H. de Smaele, 3–20. Maryland: USA Lexington Books.Search in Google Scholar
Uddin, A. T. 2015. “Provocative Speech in French Law: A Closer Look at Charlie Hebdo.” FIU Law Review 189, https://ecollections.law.fiu.edu/lawreview/vol11/iss1/14.10.25148/lawrev.11.1.14Search in Google Scholar
USCIRF. 2017. Respecting Rights? Measuring The World’s Blasphemy Laws, 46. Also available at https://www.uscirf.gov/sites/default/files/Blasphemy%20Laws%20Report.pdf.Search in Google Scholar
Vrielink, J. 2014. “‘Islamophobia’ and the Law: Belgian Hate Speech Legislation and the Wilful Destruction of the Koran.” International Journal of Discrimination and the Law 14 (1): 54–65, https://doi.org/10.1177/1358229113500418.Search in Google Scholar
Waldron, J. 2008. “The Concept and the Rule of Law.” Georgia Law Review 43: 1–61.Search in Google Scholar
Westergaard, K. 2009. Why I Drew the Cartoon: The ‘Muhammad Affair’ in Retrospect. Daily Princetonian October 1.Search in Google Scholar
Weinstein, J. 2017. “Hate Speech Bans, Democracy, and Political Legitimacy.” Constitutional Commentary 32: 527.Search in Google Scholar
International, Regional, National Instruments and other resources
The UN General Assembly, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, GA Res 217A (III), 10 December 1948, A/810 91. Search in Google Scholar
The UN General Assembly, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 16 December 1966, United Nations, Treaty Series, vol. 999. p. 171. Search in Google Scholar
The UN General Comment No. 34, Article 19, Freedoms of opinion and expression. Search in Google Scholar
The UN General Comment No. 22 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.Search in Google Scholar
The UN Human Rights office of the High Commissioner. Status of Ratification Interactive Dashboard. Retrieved at indicators.ohchr.org . on January 24th, 2019.Search in Google Scholar
The UN Human Right Council, 2011. Resolution 16/18 on Combating intolerance, negative stereotyping and stigmatization of, and discrimination, incitement to violence and violence against persons based on religion or beliefs.Search in Google Scholar
The United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner, 2012. Rabat Plan of Action on the prohibition of advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence. https://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/FreedomOpinion/Articles19-20/Pages/Index.aspx .Search in Google Scholar
European Convention on Human Rights, Retrieved at https://www.echr.coe.int/Documents/Convention_ENG.pdf .Search in Google Scholar
ASEAN Human Rights Declaration, 18 November 2012. Retrieved at htt;://www.asean.org/news/asean-statement-communiques/item/asean-human-rights-declaration accessed Dec. 9, 2019.Search in Google Scholar
Austria Criminal Code, Strafgesetzbuch [StGB] [Penal Code] BGBI. 1974/60 (Austria), available in “Blasphemy, Insult and Finding Answer in a Democratic Society, “Science and Technique of Democracy No. 47, European Commission for Democracy and Law, Mar. 31, 2010 at 156.Search in Google Scholar
Pakistan Penal Code, Act XLV of 1860 [Penal Code], Oct. 6, 1860 (pak.), available at http://www.reforld.org/docid/485231942.html. (last visited December 9, 2019).Search in Google Scholar
Indonesia Penal Code, Kitab Undang-Undang Hukum Pidana [Penal Code of Indonesia] Feb 27, 1982, http://www.refworld.org/docid/3ffc09ae2.thml (last visited December 9, 2019).Search in Google Scholar
The Law No. 1/PNPS/1965 on the Preventing of “Religious Abuse and/or Defamation”.Search in Google Scholar
Ida Lim, Ezra Zaid fails civil court challenge against Jais, Shariah prosecution over “Allah, Liberty and Love” book., 07 March 2018, Retrieved at https://malaymail.com/news/malaysia/2018/03/07 .Search in Google Scholar
Zain Siddiqui, These 7 points explain the Supreme Court’s decision to free Asia Bibi, DAWN. Jan 29, 2019. https://www.dawn.com/news/1442634 .Search in Google Scholar
Asia Bibi v. the State, etc. In The Supreme Court of Pakistan (Appellate Jurisdiction), Criminal Appeal No. 39-L of 2015. https://www.scribd.com/document/392038188/Supreme_Court_detailed-judgement-on -Asia_Bibi-s-appeal. p. 35.Search in Google Scholar
© 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
