Sometimes I get into arguments with other atheists about religion. But Jesus walking on water is absurd, they say. It’s important religious people are confronted with this, they say. Sorry, the world is full of absurdities, I feel no compulsion to address them all. And if your focus is on the easy, safe ones… other than making yourself feel better, I don’t see it doing much good.
But there are times we must speak out, or we have failed in a fundamental way.
Joseph had been pursuing another case, in which an 11-year-old, Salamat Masih, along with his father and uncle, was accused of scribbling something blasphemous on the wall of the mosque. We don’t really know what he wrote, because reproducing it, here or in court, would constitute blasphemy.The boy’s uncle, Manzoor Masih, was shot dead during the trial. The Masih case went to the high court, where a judge, Arif Bhatti, applied common sense and released him. A year later the judge was murdered in his own chambers, and his killers claimed that the judge had committed blasphemy by freeing those accused in the blasphemy case.
This is not just absurd, it’s criminally insane.