Women’s Blasphemy and the State

Blasphemous. Corrupt. Apostate. Kafir.

These words are always defined from the perspective of the religious. The religious lens is treated as neutral, as default. Blasphemy is assumed to be harm, at best offensive, at worst a threat to morality, stability, and even national security.

I have lost count of how many times I have been accused of enmity against God. Of insulting religion. Of wounding fragile sensibilities. And, of course, of Islamophobia.

These accusations are instruments of power. They shift the ground from politics to piety, from power to offence. They turn dissent into sacrilege so authority no longer has to defend itself; it only has to punish.

Conversely, blasphemy is the insistence that nothing is beyond question. It refuses to treat authority as untouchable.

But we are told blasphemy laws are necessary to protect God and faith, protect feelings, prevent violence. Each claim collapses on examination.

If you believe in an all-powerful God, do you truly believe he requires penal codes to defend him? Is that not blasphemous in and of itself?

If the purpose is to protect religion, which religion? Religions declare others false, heretical, corrupt. All claim exclusive truth.

Who decides which interpretation deserves protection? In Pakistan, Ahmadis have been prosecuted under blasphemy laws for identifying as Muslims. Blasphemy laws do not resolve these conflicting positions. They select one and back it with the full force of the state.

And to those who say the purpose is to protect feelings, whose feelings count? The Baha’i in Iran? Ex-Muslims condemned by scripture? Women facing stoning or polygamy? LGBT people labelled sinful? Offence is not neutral. Power decides which offence matters.

But we are told blasphemy laws prevent violence. In fact, they incentivise it. Ibtissame Betty Lachgar is in prison for a T-shirt. Those who threatened her with rape and death are free. The state rewards threats with censorship and persecution and shifts responsibility onto the dissenter. Outrage gains political weight; dissent does not.

This logic extends beyond states with explicit blasphemy statutes. England and Wales abolished its blasphemy law in 2008. Yet in a case involving public Qur’an burning, authorities have relied on public order legislation. Such cases raise the question of why irreverence toward religion is being treated as uniquely dangerous and destabilising in ways that irreverence toward other ideologies is not.

When religion is shielded from criticism in ways other doctrines are not, blasphemy law returns in substance, even if not in name.

If peaceful expression provokes threats and the speaker is blamed, that is not preventing violence. It is surrendering to it.

However it may be packaged, blasphemy law is a mechanism of state control. It turns doubt and dissent into crimes. It turns authority into something sacred so criticism appears immoral rather than political.

When religion fuses with state power, this is explicit. Law is framed as divine command. Hierarchy is presented as eternal.

The moment authority is declared sacred, it acquires privilege. Laws derived from it become harder to challenge. Decisions justified by it become harder to reverse. It claims immunity from criticism.

Yet human progress and political change throughout history have depended on scrutinising, challenging, and rejecting the sacred. Monarchs claimed divine right. Churches dictated law. Slavery was defended through scripture. Expansions of equality have required confronting institutions that claim sacred authority.

Consider the witch hunts of fifteenth to seventeenth century Europe. Thousands of women were burned, tortured, executed—legally sanctioned and religiously approved assaults on women’s bodies. Women who defied prescribed roles, who refused submission, who lived outside male control, were branded heretical and murdered. With devices like the scold’s bridle, an iron muzzle forced into the mouth, women were silenced (similar to the hijab, which is a fabric version).

The claim by some that religion is identity and that criticism therefore attacks people collapses under its own logic. If identity alone justifies immunity from criticism, then any ideology that shapes identity, including nationalism, would be beyond challenge. Democratic politics depends on the right to question all ideologies.

Undoubtedly, equal protection under the law is essential for everyone. But equal protection means protecting people from discrimination and violence. It does not mean shielding doctrines from criticism. Protecting believers and protecting beliefs are not the same thing. Individuals deserve protection; ideas do not. Hate speech targets people. Blasphemy challenges doctrine and ideas.

Blasphemy laws are not only about regulating speech. They protect a wider social order. Sacred authority does not operate abstractly. It is embedded in sex-based norms. The family is one of its central sites.

In patriarchal systems, property and status pass through male lines. That requires controlling women’s sexuality. Family law enforces this through marriage, inheritance, and guardianship. Women are positioned as daughters, wives, and mothers because these roles stabilise lineage and belief.

This is not only about tradition or religion. It has a material function. The patriarchal family reproduces property, status, and labour power across generations.

When doctrine underpins family law, sex-based hierarchy acquires sacred legitimacy. Norms are framed as divine rather than historical.

When women publicly reject what is defined as sacred, they interrupt the reproduction of authority, which is treated as betrayal.

Women’s compliance stabilises the system. Their dissent destabilises it.

Blasphemy laws punish men too. But when women dissent, they challenge both religious authority and sex-based hierarchy at once. The threat is doubled because the system depends on women’s compliance. Women are treated as blasphemous even before they speak, their existence regulated and segregated to prevent fitnah, or chaos, in society.

In such systems, being a woman is in and of itself an act of blasphemy. Their bodies, their hair, their voices, their sexuality are treated as deviations from a male norm. They are not recognised as autonomous subjects but as extensions of male guardians and honour. Before they speak, they are already transgressive.

Women’s blasphemy exposes that the sacred order depends on women’s obedience. That is why it is so violently opposed. A blaspheming woman is framed as dishonour. Punishment is sexualised: rape threats, stoning fantasies, bodily humiliation. The message is clear: your body belongs to the order you have challenged.

Women’s blasphemy has long been erased from official histories. Women who resisted sacred authority were labelled immoral, hysterical, possessed, dishonourable. Their dissent was recorded as pathology or sin rather than resistance.

The imprisonment of Ibtissame Betty Lachgar in Morocco illustrates this. She is serving a 30-month sentence for posting a photograph wearing a T-shirt reading ‘Allah is Lesbian’. The photograph was taken in London. The slogan challenges the assumption that God must be male and male authority natural. For that peaceful expression, she has been imprisoned, mistreated, and risks losing her arm due to serious health complications.

Those who threatened her walk free. But it is Betty who is punished.

This disparity is not a failure of the system. It is how the system works.

Blasphemy laws rely not only on prosecution but on fear. People silence themselves because they see what happens to others. Punishment teaches the limits of speech. When a woman blasphemes and survives, she weakens that fear.

The right to blaspheme is not, therefore, marginal. It is what keeps power answerable. And when women blaspheme, they also expose sacred hierarchy as human construction, making equality and liberation imaginable.

Blasphemy laws protect power by declaring it sacred and disciplining those who refuse submission. They remove authority from politics and place it beyond challenge. They convert dissent into crime and fear into governance.

Women’s blasphemy does the opposite. It exposes sacred authority as human construction. It interrupts the reproduction of obedience. It refuses the demand that women carry, transmit, and protect hierarchy in the name of religion. When women blaspheme, they dismantle the mechanism that keeps power untouchable.

A society that punishes women for blasphemy is not defending God or belief. It is defending domination.

When women speak, they are told they provoke.
When women dissent, they are told they destabilise.
When women refuse obedience, they are told they blaspheme.

A society that cannot tolerate women’s blasphemy is built on fear.
A society that can tolerate, and even celebrate it, is built on freedom.

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The above is a lightly edited transcript of a speech delivered by Maryam Namazie at an event organised by De Balie on Women’s Blasphemy vs the State on 21 February 2026.

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