Sunday being their day of rest, it is probably the best day of the week to talk to our numerous Christian readers about their religion.

Today we talk about the man who named himself (quite late in his life) Paul, and is known to history as Saint Paul.

We compare St. Paul, whose followers are now estimated at 2.2 billion – making his invention, Christianity, the biggest religion in the world – with Muhammad, whose followers are now estimated at 1.6 billion – making his invention, Islam, the second biggest religion in the world.

There are close similarities between St. Paul and Muhammad:

Both invented a god and claimed a unique relationship with him.

To each of them this god expounded exclusive information; in St. Paul’s case directly, in Muhammad’s through an intermediary.

Both claimed that his god gave him unique authority to expound his truth to the world.

Both declared that his god demanded mankind’s submission to the divine will.

Both desired his faith to become the single religion of the entire world. Though this dream has not been realized in either case, each launched an ideological movement that became enormously successful. In this they are peers, and no other individual comes near to matching their achievement in terms not only of numbers of followers but of endurance through time. (Christianity has lasted some 2,000 years, Islam about 1,500.)

Both preached the subjugation of women.

Both preached the obedience of slaves.

Both anathematized homosexuality.

Both preached predestination.

Both taught martyrdom as a model way to die.

Each held himself up as a model of the perfect man.

Each took the idea of monotheism from the Jews; laid claim to their mythology and historical legends; picked some of their commandments and rules, and adapted all of it to his special needs.

Each hoped to convert the Jews and when he failed, stuck it to them.

Differences between the two persons and their respective ministries:

Muhammad was illiterate, St. Paul was literate.

Muhammad spread his religion by the sword, St. Paul by the word. (Later Christians and Muslims used both.)

Allah and Christ – the tethered and the free-range gods:

Muhammad attached his god to himself so tightly that there could be no Allah without Muhammad. It cannot be said that St. Paul cut Christ loose, but he did give him quite a lot of slack.

A theocracy versus separation of powers:  

No secular authority can share power with Islam. There’s no part or detail of life, no action, no speech, no custom, no thought that is not regulated by Sharia, the law of Islam. The Christian churches share authority with secular powers, though there is almost always a line drawn between their respective provinces.

The main difference between the moral teachings of the two religions:

St. Paul’s Christianity teaches its adherents to be pacific, altruistic, forgiving and self-sacrificing. Muhammad’s Islam teaches its adherents to be bellicose, acquisitive, unforgiving and merciless.

To what extent are these contrasting doctrines obeyed by Christians on the one side and Muslims on the other? The Muhammad doctrine has been more faithfully followed through the history of Islam than the St. Paul doctrine through the history of Christianity. Europe, the first Christian continent, is more secular than religious now, but Christian doctrine has so soaked the culture that pacifism, altruism, and self-sacrifice is moving the Europeans to submit to the hordes of Muslims pouring onto their continent, carrying out rapine and slaughter, and demanding dominion. Islam – whose very name means “submission” – submits only to Allah.

So which side will win and which side lose looks like a foregone conclusion.

An unnamed woman, born into a non-observant Muslim family, pours justified scorn and disgust on Islam and Muhammad.

Here are facts and figures from a Pew survey conducted between June and September of 2014, reported by the Washington Post:

Christianity is on the decline in America, not just among younger generations or in certain regions of the country but across race, gender, education and geographic barriers.

The percentage of adults who describe themselves as Christians dropped by nearly eight percentage points in just seven years to about 71 percent, according to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center. …

That’s still a lot of Christians. Nearly three-quarters of the nation.

At the same time, the share of those who are not affiliated with a religion has jumped from 16 percent to about 23 percent in the same time period. The trend follows a pattern found earlier in the American Religious Identification Survey, which found that in 1990, 86 percent of American adults identified as Christians, compared with 76 percent in 2008. Here are three key takeaways from Pew’s new survey.

1. Millennials are growing even less affiliated with religion as they get older 

The older generation of millennials (those who were born from 1981 to 1989) are becoming even less affiliated with religion than they were about a decade ago, the survey suggests. In 2007, when the Pew Research Center did their last Religious Landscape Survey and these adults were just entering adulthood, 25 percent of them did not affiliate with a religion, but this grew to 34 percent in the latest survey.

The trends among the aging millennials is especially significant, said Greg Smith, associate director of research at the Pew Research Center. In 2010, 13 percent of baby boomers were religiously unaffiliated as they were entering retirement, the same percentage in 1972. “Some have asked, ‘Might they become more religiously affiliated as they get older?’ There’s nothing in this data to suggest that’s what’s happening,” he said. Millennials get married later than older generations, but they are not necessarily more likely to become religiously affiliated, he said.

2. There are more religiously unaffiliated Americans than Catholic Americans or mainline Protestant Americans

The numbers of Catholics and Protestants have each shrunk between three and five percentage points since 2007. The evangelical share of the American population has dropped by one percentage point since 2007.

There are more religiously unaffiliated Americans (23 percent) than Catholics (21 percent) and mainline Protestants (15 percent). …

That’s 36% of Christians accounted for. What sort of Christians are the remaining 35% if neither Catholic nor Protestant? Are they all Mormons?

The groups experience their losses through what’s called “religious switching,” when someone switches from one faith to another. Thirteen percent of Americans were raised Catholic but are no longer Catholic, compared with just 2 percent of Americans who are converts to Catholicism. “That means that there are more than six former Catholics for every convert to Catholicism,” Smith said. “There’s no other group in the survey that has that ratio of loss due to religious switching.” There are 3 million fewer Catholics today than there were in 2007. While the percentage of Catholics in the United States has remained relatively steady, Smith said we might be observing the beginning of the decline of the Catholic share of the population.

Pew estimates there are about 5 million fewer mainline Protestants than there were in 2007. About 10 percent of the U.S. population say they were raised in the mainline Protestant tradition, while 6 percent have converted to mainline Protestantism.

Evangelical Protestants have experienced less decline, due to their net  positive retention rate. For every person who has left evangelical Protestantism after growing up, 1.2 have switched to join an evangelical denomination.

Then comes apparently good news.

3. Those who are unaffiliated are becoming more secular

The “nones,” or religiously unaffiliated, include atheists, agnostics and those  who say they believe in “nothing in particular”. Of those who are unaffiliated, 31 percent describe themselves as atheists or agnostics, up six points from 2007.

“What we’re seeing now is that the share of people who say religion is important to them is declining,” Smith said. “The religiously unaffiliated are not just growing, but as they grow, they are becoming more secular.”

And people in older generations are increasingly disavowing organized religion. Among baby boomers, 17 percent identify as a religious “none,” up from 14 percent in 2007.

“There’s a continuing religious disaffiliation among older cohorts. That is really striking,” Smith said. “I continue to be struck by the pace at which the unaffiliated are growing.”

White Americans (24 percent) are more likely to say they have no religion, compared with 20 percent of Hispanic Americans and 18 percent of black Americans. The retention rates of the “nones” who say they were raised as religiously affiliated has grown by seven points since 2007 to 53 percent.

The religions are such musty old things. Relics from the pre-science age – or the ages between Greek enlightenment and the West European Enlightenment. Dark and awful. Christianity and Islam in particular are calculated to cause profound anxiety with their terrible doctrines of hell.

Trouble is, many who turn away from those old religions, embrace Leftism. And that’s a religion too.

In his excellent book Thinkers of the New Left, Professor Roger Scruton writes of the devout Marxist, Louis Althusser:

[Althusser says that] you can understand [Marx’s book] Capital only if you already believe it. That is the criterion of religious faith, which is locked inviolably within the single thought of its own validity – the thought that “I understand because I believe”. For the scientific mind, belief is the consequence and not the cause of understanding. But it is precisely the scientific failure of Marxism which necessitates Althusser’s enterprise – that of the sacralisation of Marx’s texts and the transformation of their content into revealed dogma. … When Althusser turns to the text of Capital, it is partly in order to give vent to religious awe, but also to extract a phrase or a paragraph, which he encases in metaphysical nonsense, like a drunken mystic commenting on the gospels.

The minds of most people living in the last two thousand years have been darkened by the mystic fantasies of three individuals:

• the confector of Christianity, St. Paul;
• the concocter of Islam, Muhammad;
• the inflictor of Communism, Karl Marx.

Is Muhammad the Prophet of Islam fictitious?

In his new book Did Muhammad Exist? An Inquiry into Islam’s Obscure Origins, Robert Spencer demonstrates, with an impressive mass of detailed evidence and close logical reasoning, that Muhammad was invented, and that the Koran –  in all its versions – was written over a long stretch of time starting many decades after the imaginary life of the fictitious prophet ended (according to the fable) in 632 C.E.  

At a  joint meeting of the Middle East Forum and Gatestone Institute in New York City on April 24, 2012, the author spoke about his intentions in writing the book.

We quote from a report of his address by Tommaso Virgili of the Middle East Forum:

Did the Prophet Muhammad really exist, or was he a sacred myth fashioned by the Koran decades after his purported death? Robert Spencer has addressed this thorny question with a dual intent:

To serve the interests of freedom of expression as a rebellion against the tyranny of censorship by the likes of the Organization of the Islamic Cooperation and the leftist idolatry for political correctness, which attempt to silence any debate on Islamic issues.

To play in the Islamic world the same positive role that non-religious, scientific research played in Judaism and Christianity, triggering a rational debate that can lead to the rejection of strict literalism.

There is, he said “an abundance of historical evidence supporting this thesis” that Muhammad is a myth.

Particularly intriguing is the absolute absence of a mention whatsoever of Muhammad, Islam or the Koran, either by the Arab conquerors or the conquered, in written records, inscriptions, coins, etc. during 630-690, i.e. to the period of Muslim conquests following the (alleged) death of Muhammad.

Furthermore, the life of Muhammad is shrouded in mystery given that the first biographies were written no sooner than 125 years after his death, and it is well acknowledged by Muslim scholars, among others, that many of the hadiths which hand down sayings and actions of the Prophet are false, artfully created for political reasons.

Nor is the Koran itself a more reliable source: it is supposed to have been collected and distributed in its standard edition no later than in 653, but one cannot find any mention of it until the 690s, and the traces of Aramaic and Christian traditions inside the text indicate a well established contact with the conquered territories.

Indeed Robert Spencer demonstrates that there are plentiful and convincing signs of Christian and Jewish sources – deliberately distorted or misunderstood or both – for much of the Koran. In particular, a Syriac Christian document was plundered or plagiarized by the authors of the Koran – and in our opinion dumbed down even from the low standard of Christian documents. Dumb and dumber, one might say.

In conclusion, historical evidence tells a very different story from the traditional one, namely that of political and military events which occurred at a time when some Arabian tribes expanded at the expense of the “sick men” – the Persian and Byzantine empires – and which necessitated a glue to bind them together and to form a central focus of identification. And what could offer a better nucleus for the nascent Arab empire than religion?

We strongly recommend Did Muhammad Exist? An Inquiry into Islam’s Obscure Origins by Robert Spencer because, as he said, it is “a rebellion against the tyranny of censorship”. But also for reasons of our own. Islam is a revolting ideology and this meticulously researched and well reasoned study, by putting its lies and nonsense under the microscope of scholarship, is a serious blow against it. Wounding certainly. Crippling we hope. Death-dealing – time will tell.

Footnote; There is only one thing in the book we would take issue with: the theory that it is not a promise of 72 virgins that lures Muslim terrorists to paradise, but 72 raisins. We do not believe even a Muslim would kill himself for 72 raisins.

None of us is a cartoonist, so to support Everybody Draw Muhammad Day – May 20, 2010 – we show all 12 of the original cartoons that were published by the Danish paper Jyllands-Posten 0n 30 September, 2005.

This is the best of them, by Kurt Westergaard.

In deliberately stirred-up rage over these drawings, Muslims killed at least 139 people in various countries, most of them during riotous protest rallies.

The right response to Muslim protest would have been for all the editors of all the newspapers in all the countries that claim to to be free, to re-published the cartoons by agreement on the same day.

Like all ideologies, Islam needs to be examined critically, challenged by reasoned argument, and subjected to jokes of all sorts, including cartoons.

“Irreverence is the champion of liberty and its only sure defense.”                        – Mark Twain

Footnote: See a selection of today’s drawings of Muhammad here.

The vulgar, funny, satirical cartoon South Park brought the “prophet” Muhammad  into its 200th episode by having it said that he was hidden in a U-haul truck and then in a bear costume (out of which, however, emerged Santa Claus, according to Jon Stewart below – we didn’t see the episode).

Muslims took offense. At what exactly isn’t clear. A Muslim named Abu Talhah al Amrikee warned Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of South Park, by means of a video on the net that they could be punished with death like the film-maker Theo van Gogh.

So Comedy Central, the channel that shows South Park, censored the episode. They bleeped out all mention of Muhammad, and a final statement deploring intimidation.

That’s what Islam’s all about. That’s what Muslims do: take offense, intimidate, and kill people for making films and drawing cartoons of Muhammad, while also bombing, blowing up planes, flying planes into buildings, shooting unarmed soldiers, plotting mass murder in the New York subway, running over their daughters, beheading their wives, sending money to terrorist organizations to pay for suicide-bombing equipment, parking cars full of explosive outside nightclubs, etc.  And Western authorities feel dreadfully ashamed over offending Muslims, and try not to, and apologize, and pretend it’s not Muslims doing the bombing and shooting and all that.

Almost everyone’s scared of Muslims, as Muslims do their best to make us so. Though they pretend that it’s cruel of non-Muslims to fear them, to be what they call “Islamophobic”.

On Islam’s victory over South Park – an everyday story of the contemporary Western world – find excellent comment by Mark Steyn here, and Diana West here.

May 20 will be “Everybody Draw Muhammad” day. We will join in enthusiastically, and urge our readers to do the same.

Here’s Jon Stewart. We’ll overlook his silly remark about atheists.

Islam Watch explains that there is no such thing as ‘moderate Islam’.  The article contains the quotations that prove the argument. Here are some paragraphs of it:

The ‘real’ Islam is a vile ideology soaked with blood …  It is an all-encompassing dogma that shackles its subjects in a perpetual state of frenzied delusion about the grandeurs of heaven that they will get if they wage war against the infidels. Islam is war. And Muhammad was a warrior (and a very successful one).

It is unfortunate that politicians, scholars, state heads and news & print media seems to have ignored the historical and factual Islam altogether. Instead, we are bombarded with statements such as:

1. ‘Islam is a religion of peace.’

2. ‘Some evil people have hijacked Islam for their own benefits.’

3. ‘Islam encourages brotherhood, coexistence and mutual understanding among all human beings’, and so on.

Also, Muslims and Islamic apologists are busier than ever in proclaiming that Islam is a religion of peace and Muhammad is the best ‘role model’. Of course, their claims are rubbish.

What Islamists are trying to accomplish is forward the idea that there is somehow an Islam that is moderate, enlightened, peaceful and brotherly. They call it the ‘moderate Islam’. Now, manifestly … all such notions about Islam are utterly false…

Although it’s not completely wrong to use the term ‘real Islam’ as the term stresses the importance of going to the source of Islamic theology (and that is the Quran and the life of Muhammad.) However, it would be better simply to call Islam Islam; nothing more, nothing less. And by Islam, it is to be understood that it is a manifestation of the Quran and Muhammad.

On the other hand, there is no such thing as ‘moderate Islam’. There is just Islam. Islam is inherently not moderate as shown in the previous sections. Islam is a dogma that strives to perpetuate itself through war, terror and subjugation. Islam, when established within a society, becomes the law and encompasses every aspect of the society. And an Islamic society like that of Pakistan, Iran etc. are not moderate in any manner or form. The routine killing, lynching, and burning of blasphemers (in case of Pakistan) are a small example of how Islamic societies actually operate.

‘Moderate Islam’ is a deluded concept concocted by Islamists to fool the masses.

There is no moderation in Islam. There is just Islam in Islam.

What must be done?

Islamists are busy fooling the masses with their rhetoric of a peaceful and moderate Islam. Their attempts should be exposed and stalled. Islam must not be given any chance to be accepted as ‘just another religion’. We, the atheists and anti-islamists must defeat this notion of moderate Islam. The fallacy of the concept of Islam being moderate can be very easy and conveniently exposed by simply stating the historical and Quranic facts.

It’s very important that ex-Muslims, anti-islamists, and atheists squarely challenge this notion of ‘moderate Islam’.

We were lucky to have Fox News to tell us what the left-slanted mainstream media concealed, and to bring us opinion from both the right and the left. Fox News was “fair, balanced, and unafraid” as they claimed and continue to claim.

But is the claim still justified?

Not if we are to judge by their treatment of the Dutch politician Geert Wilders, who is on trial in Holland for expressing an opinion, well supported by facts, on the horrific ideology of Islam.

Here are three articles which together, in sequence, tell the sorry story:

The first is by David Swindle at Front Page:

Fox News’ Special Report with Bret Baier featured a segment tonight [March 8, 2010] on Dutch politician Geert Wilders’s blasphemy trial in the Netherlands.

The segment featured these descriptors of Wilders:

“A man who inspires fierce emotions.”

“Anger on the streets of London. The object of the demonstration was a recent visit by Far-Right Dutch politician Geert Wilders.”

“His Anti-Muslim rhetoric makes him a target of critics.”

“Wilders says Muslim head scarves should be banned, he’s branded the Muslim prophet Muhammed a pedophile and likened the Muslim Koran to Mein Kampf.”

“Far-Right”?

The “Far-Right” label is meant to smear Wilders by trying to associate him with racist European political parties like the BNP [British National Party] that actually warrant the label.

“Anti-Muslim”? Try Anti-Islam. Wilders’ film Fitna exposes how Islam’s first victims are always Muslims. [A link is provided to the film.]

Finally, the report cites three examples of Wilders’ allegedly extreme, “Far-Right” views. While whether head scarves should be banned is a matter of opinion, the last two points — Muhammad’s pedophilia and the Koran’s racist and genocidal injunctions are points of fact.

Later on Special Report they featured a panel in response to the story in which host Jim Angle questioned Charles Krauthammer [whom we greatly respect and admire, and usually, but not this time, agree with – JB], Bill Kristol [whom we respect, and often, but not this time, agree with], and A.B. Stoddard. Krauthammer said that Wilders was wrong about Islam — that the Dutch politician did not see a difference between Islam and Islamism.  So those who follow “Islam” ignore passages of the Koran and those who follow “Islamism” actually do what the book tells them to do? Is that right, Charles? Just want to make sure I’m up to speed on the preferred Orwellianisms on the Politically Correct Right.

Stoddard’s comments — she said that Wilders saw no difference between terrorist Muslims and non-violent Muslims — indicate that it’s likely that her first exposure to Wilders was the segment. And Kristol? He dismissed Wilders as a “demagogue.”

This is supposed to be the “conservative” network here and they are unable to present a single panelists who will support Wilders.

The next is by John L. Work, also at Front Page:

Following the gang hatchet job on Dutch Parliamentarian Geert Wilders by two separate FOX News crews a few nights ago, FOX pulled down all the video footage from the internet – like it never happened. Well, it did happen. Jim Angle, Glenn Beck [who we think is doing a great job exposing the Obama administration and is a splendid entertainer] Bill Kristol, Charles Krauthammer and A.B Stoddard all did the dirty work during two different shows. …

First, let’s look at Beck’s six minute interview with Wilders from February of 2009. Beck warmly welcomed Wilders and gave him plenty of air-time. Wilders presented his case for the noble cause of resistance to the growing Islamic repression of free speech in The Netherlands. Beck treated Wilders like the hero he is.

A year later it is impossible to reconcile Beck’s posture and position in 2009 with his attack on Wilders this week – unless one allows for the possibility that Beck is now being influenced by powers above him at FOX News. [A link is provided to Beck’s 2009 interview with Wilders.]

Now for this week’s piece, in which Beck labeled Wilders a fascist [Another link is provided.]:

Let’s analyze the evidence:

Wilders, himself, has not changed since the first Beck interview – not his speech, not his positions, and not his beliefs. What has changed immensely is his stature in The Netherlands. He is much more powerful now than he was when he first appeared on Beck’s show in 2009. In fact, it is entirely within the realm of possibility that Wilders could become Prime Minister.

Now, FOX News is astonishingly trying to destroy Wilders. Ignoramus, demagogue and fascist are pretty nasty labels to lay on anyone. Beck was not recognizable this week from his demeanor and position with Wilders in 2009.

Other than Muslims throughout the world, who would be unhappy with Wilders’ rise to power and prominence in The Netherlands? Who stands to gain from stopping the most prominent and eloquent defender of Western Civilization in Europe? Who stands to gain from having Wilders’ reputation hacked to pieces by a major American news outlet? You can figure this out. [Another link is provided.]

A whole lot has changed at FOX News, folks.

This last link leads to our third source, an article by Diana West:

It was pile-on time at Fox News tonight as Glenn Beck, Charles Krauthammer, a gal whose name I missed [update — A.B. Stoddard] and Bill Kristol all branded Geert Wilders beyond the pale tonight.

Beck classified Geert as a fascist.

Krauthammer said Geert didn’t know the difference between Islam and Islamism — never mind that according to Krauthammer’s idea of Islamic scholarship, neither did Mohammed.

[Stoddard] said she agreed with Imam Krauthammer and added that if people like this (Geert) are elected to lead Holland it will suffer the consequences.

Kristol called Geert a demagogue.

In other words, a stomach-turning display.

Fact is, this anti-Geert pundit solidarity will only delight Newscorp [owners of Fox] stakeholder Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. That’s because it is Wilders in the Netherlands who stands as the unexpectedly strong spearhead of resistance to the Islamization of Europe and the wider West. As a scion of the most powerful sharia dictatorship in the world, Prince Talal doesn’t like that. How fortunate for him that Fox News doesn’t like it, either.

'Witch' being decapitated in Saudi Arabia

From Asia News:

Ali Sibat, a Lebanese psychic who made predictions on a satellite TV channel from his home in Beirut, was arrested by religious police in the holy city of Madinah during a pilgrimage in May 2008 and then sentenced to death by decapitation on 9 November this year.

“He was the most popular psychic on the channel,” said May al-Khansa, Sibat’s lawyer. “The number of callers, including from all over the Gulf, spiked in number when he appeared,” she added. “He was told if he confessed to witchcraft, he will be released and allowed to return to Lebanon.”

Seems he ‘confessed’ and was not released.

Sibat’s case is not unique. Dozens of people are arrested each year on charges like witchcraft, recourse to supernatural beings, black magic and fortune telling. These practices are considered polytheistic and severely punished according to Sharia rules.

The Prophet Muhammad claimed that the angel Gabriel dictated the Koran to him. Did Muhammad not have ‘recourse to a supernatural being’?

And Allah himself, ‘the greatest’, what is he if not ‘a supernatural being’?

Ah, well! The religious mind is necessarily an inconsistent mind.

Here’s a first-hand account of the goings-on in that devilish covern, the deceptively named UN Human Rights Council (read more here):    

The Inquisition is back, and this time it has set up shop at the United Nations. Consider the resolution “Combating the Defamation of Religions” passed by a comfortable margin last week at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva (and passed by the General Assembly every year since 2005).

The resolution decries a “campaign of defamation of religions,” intensifying since 2001, in which “the media” and “extremist organizations” are “perpetuating stereotypes about certain religions” (read: Islam) and “sacred persons” (read: Muhammad). It urges UN member states to provide redress “within their respective legal and constitutional systems.” Capitalizing on cartoon riots and Western anxieties over the excesses of the war on terror, the language conflates peaceful criticism of Islam with anti-Muslim bigotry and seeks to stifle speech in the name of “respect for religions and beliefs.”

In my capacity as UN representative for the secularist think tank Center for Inquiry, I spent a surreal two weeks at the Council participating in the negotiations over the language of this resolution, sponsored by a 57-member intergovernmental body called the Organization of the Islamic Conference, or OIC.

After one of these sessions, I found my way into a private conversation with the chair of the negotiations, a delegate for the government of Pakistan. We were soon joined by the representatives of the US, Canada, and the European Union. There we were, “the West,” standing at the front of an empty conference room, gingerly trying to reason with this feisty, yet solicitous, Pakistani diplomat.

The American delegate noted that, “History shows that criminalizing speech doesn’t work,” when the chair interrupted her to propose a case he hoped would hit home. Suppose someone were to say that the Virgin Mary was not a virgin but a promiscuous woman? What could be the purpose of this statement, he asked, except mockery?

Canada pointed out that ‘defamation’ has a specific legal meaning—involving the spread of falsehoods that harm some individual—which is not applicable to cases of religiously offensive speech. For starters, religious personages like Mary and Muhammad are not alive, so they’re not, legally speaking, persons who can be harmed. Undeterred by the Canadian’s reductio ad absurdum, the Pakistani delegate responded that this is precisely why we need the authorities to protect them against insult: they are not around to defend themselves.

Never mind how one would demonstrate, in a court of law, the falsity of a scurrilous rumor about a far-distant and long-gone (and quite possibly never-there) religious figure. Ironically, all the world’s heretics could never do more damage to the reputations of gods, saints, and prophets than has already been done by their devoted followers. The odd thing about God is that no matter how much He is slandered, his livelihood never seems to suffer as a result. One of the perks of being a necessary being, I guess, is that you never lose your job no matter how unpopular you become. In that respect God may be the ultimate bureaucrat. I didn’t bring this up.

It would all be absurdist comedy if it didn’t have such grave consequences. Defamation of religions resolutions are far worse than useless; they are a direct threat to human rights. While they will have no impact on blasphemy in western democracies (which already censor themselves far too often), they serve to legitimize the suppression of peaceful political and religious dissent elsewhere—first and foremost in the Islamic states themselves.