Download or read book A Brief History of Blasphemy written by Richard Webster and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Studie over de opvattingen over godslastering in verschillende godsdiensten door de eeuwen heen, toegespitst in een afzonderlijke bespreking van de controverse rond The satanic verses van Salman Rushdie

Download or read book Acts Against God written by David Nash and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2020-04-13 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Blasphemy is a phenomenon that spans human experience, from the ancient world right up to today’s ferocious religious debates. Acts Against God is the first accessible history of this crime—its prosecution, its impact, and its punishment and suppression. While acknowledging blasphemy as an act of individuals, Acts Against God also considers the act as a widespread and constant presence in cultural, political, and religious life. Beginning in ancient Greece and the genesis of blasphemy’s link with the state, David Nash moves on to explore blasphemy in the medieval world, where it was used both as an accusation against outsiders and as a method of crusading for piety in the West. He considers how the medieval world developed the concept of heresy as a component of disciplining its populations, the first coherent phase in state control of belief. This phenomenon reached its full flowering in the Reformation, where conformity became a fixation of confessional states. The Enlightenment created agendas of individual rights where room for religious doubt pushed blasphemy into the twilight as modern humankind hoped for its demise. But, concluding in the twenty-first century, Nash shows how individuals and the state alike now seek to adopt blasphemy as a cornerstone of identity and as the means to resist the secularization and globalization of culture.

Download or read book Blasphemy written by Leonard Williams Levy and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 1995 with total page 708 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What society considers blasphemy - a verbal assault against the sacred - is a litmus test of the standards it believes to be necessary to preserve unity, order, and morality. Society has always condemned as blasphemy what it regards as an abuse of liberty

Download or read book Blasphemy written by David Lawton and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 1993-07 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Blasphemy deals with popular and literary culture, religion and racism, law, social power, and international relations. Its scope extends from the Old Testament to the fatwa imposed on Salman Rushdie and the Gulf War.

Download or read book Dangerous Speech written by Javier Villa-Flores and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2006-11-15 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dangerous Speech is the first systematic treatment of blasphemous speech in colonial Mexico. This engaging social history examines the representation of blasphemy as a sin and a crime, and its repression by the Spanish Inquisition. The Spanish colonists viewed blasphemy not only as an insult against God but also as a dangerous misrepresentation of the deity, which could call down his wrath in a ruinous assault on the imperial enterprise. Why then, asks Villa-Flores, did Spaniards dare to blaspheme? Having mined the period’s moral literature—philosophical works as well as royal decrees and Inquisition treatises and trial records in Spanish, Mexican, and U.S. archives and research libraries—Villa-Flores deftly interweaves images of daily life in colonial Mexico with vivid descriptions of human interactions to illustrate the complexity of a culture profoundly influenced by the Catholic Church. In entertaining and sometimes horrifying vignettes, the reader comes face to face with individuals who used language to assert or manipulate their identities within that repressive society. Villa-Flores offers an innovative interpretation of the social uses of blasphemous speech by focusing on specific groups—conquistadors, Spanish settlers, Spanish women, and slaves of both genders—as a lens to examine race, class, and gender relations in colonial Mexico. He finds that multiple motivations led people to resort to blasphemy through a gamut of practices ranging from catharsis and gender self-fashioning to religious rejection and active resistance. Dangerous Speech is a valuable resource for students and scholars of colonialism, the social history of language, Mexican history, and the changing relations of gender, class, and ethnicity in colonial Latin America.

Download or read book Blasphemy in the Christian World written by David Nash and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2010-09-16 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tracing the subject from the Middle Ages to the present, David Nash outlines the history of blasphemy as a concept - from a species of heresy to modern understandings of it as a crime against the sacred and individual religious identity. Investigating its appearance in speech, literature, popular publishing and the cinema, he disinters the likely motives and agendas of blasphemers themselves, as well as offering a glimpse of blasphemy's victims. In particular, he seeks to understand why this seemingly medieval offence has reappeared to become a distinctly modern presence in the West.

Download or read book The Future of Blasphemy written by Austin Dacey and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2012-01-26 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the days of Moses, blasphemy was the mortal offence of failing to respect the divine. In an age of human rights, blasphemy is understood as a failure to respect persons, as insult, defamation, or "advocacy of religious hatred." The criminalisation of this personal blasphemy has been advanced at the United Nations and upheld by the European Court of Human Rights, which has asserted a universal "right to respect for religious feelings." The Future of Blasphemy turns respect on its head. Respect demands that we grant each other equal standing in the moral community, not that we never offend. Politically, respect for citizens requires a public discourse that is open to all viewpoints. Going beyond the question of free speech versus religion, The Future of Blasphemy defends an ethical model of blasphemy. Controversies surrounding sacrilege are contests over what counts as sacred, disagreements about what has central, inviolable, and incommensurable value. In such public contestation of the sacred, each of us-secular and religious alike-has equal right to speak on its behalf.

Download or read book Blasphemy written by Douglas Preston and published by Forge Books. This book was released on 2008-01-08 with total page 548 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Douglas Preston's Blasphemy, the world's biggest supercollider, locked in an Arizona mountain, was built to reveal the secrets of the very moment of creation: the Big Bang itself. The Torus is the most expensive machine ever created by humankind, run by the world's most powerful supercomputer. It is the brainchild of Nobel Laureate William North Hazelius. Will the Torus divulge the mysteries of the creation of the universe? Or will it, as some predict, suck the earth into a mini black hole? Or is the Torus a Satanic attempt, as a powerful televangelist decries, to challenge God Almighty on the very throne of Heaven? Twelve scientists under the leadership of Hazelius are sent to the remote mountain to turn it on, and what they discover must be hidden from the world at all costs. Wyman Ford, ex-monk and CIA operative, is tapped to wrest their secret, a secret that will either destroy the world...or save it. The countdown begins... At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Download or read book Pakistan s Blasphemy Laws written by Shemeem Burney Abbas and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2013-07-01 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Under the guise of Islamic law, the prophet Muhammad’s Islam, and the Qur’an, states such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Bangladesh are using blasphemy laws to suppress freedom of speech. Yet the Prophet never tried or executed anyone for blasphemy, nor does the Qur’an authorize the practice. Asserting that blasphemy laws are neither Islamic nor Qur‘anic, Shemeem Burney Abbas traces the evolution of these laws from the Islamic empires that followed the death of the Prophet Muhammad to the present-day Taliban. Her pathfinding study on the shari’a and gender demonstrates that Pakistan’s blasphemy laws are the inventions of a military state that manipulates discourse in the name of Islam to exclude minorities, women, free thinkers, and even children from the rights of citizenship. Abbas herself was persecuted under Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, so she writes from both personal experience and years of scholarly study. Her analysis exposes the questionable motives behind Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, which were resurrected during General Zia-ul-Haq’s regime of 1977–1988—motives that encompassed gaining geopolitical control of the region, including Afghanistan, in order to weaken the Soviet Union. Abbas argues that these laws created a state-sponsored “infidel” ideology that now affects global security as militant groups such as the Taliban justify violence against all “infidels” who do not subscribe to their interpretation of Islam. She builds a strong case for the suspension of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws and for a return to the Prophet’s peaceful vision of social justice.

Download or read book Blasphemy written by S. Brent Plate and published by Black Dog Publishing. This book was released on 2006 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through an examination of a broad range of contentious imagery in art, this book questions the status of blasphemy in a world ever more divided in its views of what is acceptable, and aims to provide a vantage point from which to view the interrelations between religion, politics and the visual arts.

Download or read book Blasphemy and Freedom of Expression written by Jeroen Temperman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-11-16 with total page 771 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book details the legal ramifications of existing anti-blasphemy laws and debates the legitimacy of such laws in Western liberal democracies.

Download or read book Word Crimes written by Joss Marsh and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1998-08-15 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1883 newspaper editor G.W. Foote stood trial three times for blasphemy. Here Joss Marsh reconstructs the forgotten cases of more than 200 working-class "blasphemers" in Victorian England, whose stubborn refusal to silence their "hooligan" voices, along with Foote, helped secure our rights to speak and write freely today. 22 photos.

Download or read book Treason Against God written by Leonard Williams Levy and published by Schocken Books Incorporated. This book was released on 1981 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The French Revolution as Blasphemy written by William L. Pressly and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-04-28 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: William Pressly presents for the first time a close analysis of two important, neglected paintings, arguing that they are among the most extraordinary works of art devoted to the French Revolution. Johan Zoffany's Plundering the King's Cellar at Paris, August 10, 1792, and Celebrating over the Bodies of the Swiss Soldiers, both painted in about 1794, represent events that helped turn the English against the Revolution. Pressly places both paintings in their historical context—a time of heightened anti-French hysteria—and relates them to pictorial conventions: contemporary history painting, the depiction of urban mobs in satiric and festival imagery, and Hogarth's humorous presentation of modern moral subjects, all of which Zoffany adopted and reinvented for his own purposes. Pressly relates the paintings to Zoffany's status as a German-born Catholic living in Protestant England and to Zoffany's vision of revolutionary justice and the role played by the sansculottes, women, and blacks. He also examines the religious dimension in Zoffany's paintings, showing how they broke new ground by conveying Christian themes in a radically new format. Art historians will find Pressly's book of immense value, as will cultural historians interested in religion, gender, and race.

Download or read book Blasphemy written by Sherman Alexie and published by Grove/Atlantic, Inc.. This book was released on 2012-10-02 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sixteen new stories and fifteen classics by the National Book Award–winning, New York Times–bestselling author of War Dances. Sherman Alexie’s stature as a writer of stories, poetry, and novels has soared over the course of his twenty-book, twenty-year career. His wide-ranging, acclaimed fiction throughout the last two decades—from The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven to his most recent PEN/Faulkner Award–winning War Dances—have established him as a star in contemporary American literature. A bold and irreverent observer of life among Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest, the daring, versatile, funny, and outrageous Alexie showcases his many talents in Blasphemy, where he unites fifteen beloved classics with sixteen new stories in one sweeping anthology for devoted fans and first-time readers. Included here are some of his most esteemed tales, including “What You Pawn I Will Redeem,” in which a homeless Indian man quests to win back a family heirloom; “This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona,” a road-trip morality tale; “The Toughest Indian in the World,” about a night shared between a writer and a hitchhiker; and his most recent, “War Dances,” about a man grappling with sudden hearing loss in the wake of his father’s death. Alexie’s new stories are fresh and quintessential, about donkey basketball leagues, lethal wind turbines, a twenty-four-hour Asian manicure salon, good and bad marriages, and all species of warriors in America today. An indispensable Alexie collection, Blasphemy reminds us, on every thrilling page, why Alexie is one of our greatest contemporary writers and a true master of the short story. Praise for Blasphemy “Alexie once again reasserts himself as one the most compelling contemporary practitioners of the short story. In Blasphemy, the author demonstrates his talent on nearly every page. . . . [Alexie] illuminates the lives of his characters in unique, surprising, and, ultimately, hopeful ways.” —Boston Globe “Alexie writes with arresting perception in praise of marriage, in mockery of hypocrisy, and with concern for endangered truths and imperiled nature. He is mischievously and mordantly funny, scathingly forthright, deeply and universally compassionate, and wholly magnetizing. This is a must-have collection.” —Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review) “[A] sterling collection of short stories by Alexie, a master of the form. . . . The newer pieces are full of surprises. . . . These pieces show Alexie at his best: as an interpreter and observer, always funny if sometimes angry, and someone, as a cop says of one of his characters, who doesn’t “fit the profile of the neighborhood.”“—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Download or read book Revenge Politics and Blasphemy in Pakistan written by Adeel Hussain and published by Hurst Publishers. This book was released on 2022-06-16 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This fascinating book uncovers the hidden stories behind Pakistan’s fixation with blasphemy–tales of revenge, political scheming and sovereign betrayal. Hussain’s account opens in nineteenth-century colonial Punjab and traces blasphemy killings to the present, linking their emergence to polemic encounters between Hindu and Muslim revivalist sects, namely the Arya Samaj and the Ahmadiyya. It offers, for the first time, the arresting backstories to the assassinations of Pandit Lekh Ram, a leading Hindu nationalist; Swami Shraddhanand, an early progenitor of Hindu nationalism and the principal advocate for converting Muslims; and Rajpal, the Hindu publisher of a sensationalist book on the Prophet Muhammad. Revenge, Politics and Blasphemy in Pakistan then maps the curious afterlives of these killings, illuminating the most critical moments in Pakistan’s history: 1953, when outraged protestors smashed stores owned by religious minorities, triggering the country’s first state of emergency; 1974, when Islamist parties pressured Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto to put blasphemy on the constitutional agenda; 1984, when Zia-ul-Haq transformed Pakistan according to his Islamist vision, which included more severe punishments for blasphemy; and the twenty-first century, when digital media has dramatically increased the visibility of blasphemy killings, prompting political parties to demonstrate their commitment to the cause.

Download or read book Blasphemy in Modern Britain written by David S. Nash and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-10-10 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1999, this book deals with the cultural and legal debates which have counterposed the right to free speech and the need to protect Christian sensibilities in Britain from the time of the French Revolution to the present day. Central to the book is a close study of the content and public reception of the anti-Christian literature of the 19th century associated with the names G.W.Foote and J.W. Gott, the Freethinker and The Truthseeker. David Nash here also examines a variety of critical-theoretical approaches to blasphemy and blasphemous writing, including postmodernism and the work of Foucault and Said. The book concludes with a detailed examination of 20th-century blasphemy cases, up to and including the Gay News case, The Last Temptation of Christ and Visions of Ecstasy.