No religion or its followers is above the law

by Johann Hari
Evening Herald
March 20, 2010

https://www.legal-project.org/675/no-religion-or-its-followers-is-above-the-law

Excerpt:

What can make tens of millions of people -- who are in their daily lives peaceful and compassionate and caring -- suddenly want to physically dismember a man for drawing a cartoon, or make excuses for an international criminal conspiracy to protect child-rapists?

Not reason. Not evidence. No.

But it can happen when people choose their polar opposite -- religion. In the past week we have seen two examples of how people can begin to behave in bizarre ways when they decide it is a good thing to abandon any commitment to fact and instead act on faith.

It has led some to regard people accused of the attempted murders of the Mohammad cartoonists as victims, and to demand "respect" for the Pope, when he should be in a police station being quizzed about his Church's role in the past in covering up the rape of children.

In 2005, 12 men in a small secular European democracy decided to draw a quasi-mythical figure who had been dead for 1400 years. They were trying to make a point. They knew that in many Muslim cultures, it is considered offensive to draw Mohammad.

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