Blasphemous Speech in a Secular Society: An Anachronism?

Abstract

A quarter of a century ago, the Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader of the Iranian theocracy, declared that Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses was against Islam, the Prophet, and the Koran. In accordance with Islamic law, the author and those responsible for the book’s publication were thereupon proclaimed, urbi et orbi as it were, guilty of death. It was a watershed moment for Great Britain and other Western liberal democracies, which had to respond to what was in effect the application of foreign—and alien—law on their territory. The violent protests against the Danish newspaper that, in 2005, published caricatures of the Prophet and the recent massacre at Charlie Hebdo show that this type of conflict is far from over.