International Blasphemy Day holiday was created in response to laws the world over that attempt to curtail what can be said, sung, drawn, painted and filmed based on arbitrary rules from one or another of the so-called holy books. The disrespect, mockery and ridicule are intended to provoke as a way of pointing out how ridiculous such laws and morays are.
Is it offensive? You bet! The offense is in response to far greater offense. It is the radical theists who run things and always have. It is they who spread hate, oppression, intolerance and stupidity. This day and act is a protest against stupidity. The idea that someone can be killed for “insulting Islam”, or murdered for drawing a cartoon, or thrown off a roof for being gay, or a long list of other atrocities in the name of one god or another is the offense, not someone making a joke, regardless of what some may perceive as “poor taste”.
Some ask “what is the point of offending so many when those crimes are committed by so few? Do you really think this will gain their support?” The people who stood with Gandhi were not trying to “convince” the British Empire soldiers who shot them down. The people who marched against the Vietnam War had no illusions that the “hard-hats” who beat them/us would be swayed. What was the point with refusing to leave the lunch counter or go to the back of the bus? What was the point of burning draft cards? What they did hope and time showed them to be correct, is that the attention that was brought to the evil accepted by society was seen by others, who also recognized the wrong and held hands in solidarity. Throughout modern history the one tactic that has proven successful against wrong-headed laws has been a simple one: BREAK that law. It is a protest in the form of civil disobedience, aimed at religious institutions instead of governments. The protest has to fit the object being protested. Rosa Parks was not protesting for free speech, but for the right to sit where she would, so she sat there. The issue here is my, OUR speech being curtailed based on someone else’s arbitrary code of morality. So, yes the point is to deride, demean, ridicule, mock. Basically everything that blasphemy laws say you can't do. If the law and in this case the wider societal acceptance is against blasphemy, then the only tactic that makes sense is to DO the very thing that is “forbidden” you.
While some may think that one person being blasphemous on his cute little website, or Facebook page, or Twitter has no impact, it means that person is overlooking the power of social media. If social media has no power, why have so many atheist bloggers been executed for nothing more that expressing their views online? The point is not an act as an individual, seen by a few thousand people at best, but the totality of hundreds of thousands or more, proving that they will not be shouted down. That we stand in solidarity with those who have been permanently scarred or lost their lives to religious persecution. That we are watching the mullahs who create fatwas and priests of all stripes who use their pulpits to condemn freedom of thought and expression.
This is not a new struggle, but simply one more battle in the war against oppression, intolerance and exploitation that has been going on forever and fought against on many fronts. So today scream it from the roof tops... Fuck Jesus. Fuck Mohamed, Fuck Moses, Fuck Buddha, but especially Fuck anybody who will jail torture and kill because you said fuck their stupid rules!
Some fun examples of blasphemy
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