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IT IS tempting to think of punishment for blasphemy as a mediaeval anachronism. In fact, it is very much a contemporary reality. The Pakistani Supreme Court recently upheld a judgment that the only fit punishment for blasphemy is death. In Afghanistan, the journalist Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh received such a sentence last year for distributing an article critical of the status of women within Islamic societies. In Sudan British teacher Gillian Gibbons was convicted of insulting Islam by allowing a child to give the name Mohammed to a teddy bear. As an instrument of repression, the charge of blasphemy is very much in vogue.

All of which pushes the decision of Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern to propose legislation on the crime of “blasphemous libel” beyond the realms of mere misjudgment and into those of dangerous folly. An amendment to the Defamation Bill would outlaw the deliberate publishing or uttering of anything that is deemed by members of any religion to be “grossly abusive or insulting” to anything that they hold to be sacred. Such speech or writing would be punishable by a fine of up to €100,000.