The blasphemy law is no Eu thing, but an Irish thing, Castout.
The EU made it a punishable crime to ask questions on religion that it does not want to answer, or cannot answer.
In any way, giving such an absolute position to an idea, an ideology, a party, a great Führer, wehre the simple fact that you ask question on it/them can bring you to court, and where your disobedience for demands from a religious ideology because you are no member of it, nevertheless can bring you to court, is a very bad idea. For fanatic believers, being an atheist already is a blasphemy that challenges their belief. Maybe I should think twice before feeling attracted to visit Ireland, then....
Reglions have to seek legitimisation and acceptance, and thus they have to be available for criticism and independent thinling baout them - else oyu have installed a new tyranny and legalised it by law. You could as well have a law fobidding to oppose a given political party, or making certain political opinions mandatory. then you have a political tyranny.
Read the article, Letum: it says that this law is not to calm the daily bullying between catholics and Protestants, but because so far only christians enjoyed protection of their belief from "blasphemic" questioning (maybe that is why it is still so strong in Ireland...), and that this new law now is needed to make this discrimination of other religions a thing of the past. Obviously something like the blasphemy law now already has been in place since 1937 - and now it just gets widened to cover other cults and remove them from availability for critical opinion as well.
Quote:
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"This new law is both silly and dangerous," he said. "It is silly because medieval religious laws have no place in a modern secular republic, where the criminal law should protect people and not ideas."
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A. The German state conspirates with the church in raising mandatory church taxes, it is the state collecting them for the church, together with social taxes etc. Ireland opens door and gate for supressing any criticism of any religion over "blasphemy". the EU does the same by equalling criticism with offence.
At the same time, there is an ongoing row over sexual abuse of children by Christian priests. It is no small drama only, we learned over the past years, but quite a systematic, wide spread plague. And the church still does not act with determinationa gainst those many "priests" who are nothing else but paedophiles and sadists in church uniforms. Still the church delays and tries to buy time.
B. The past years have seen
tremendous pressure from Muslim nations and lobby groups both on european and UN level to cut freedom of speech and freedom of publication for the sake of supressing criticism of Islam, and making it unavailable for critical reflection.
The Guardian has an essay pointing to justice minister Dermot Ahern who has explicitly referred to immigration as the primary drive behind this new law. He surely was not primarily thinking about Buddhist, Taoist, Hinduist immigration, right?
C. A pro-Islamic EU lobby, rallying around Turkish EU membership but going beyond that, wants to enforce a strong Islam in Europe and a strong Islamic migration to Europe. Opposing opinions on Islam being compatible with the Western value order and questioning it's tolerance for other cultures are highly unwelcomed amongst these people. It could not be what should not be.
Add 1 and 1 and 1 together, and do not be surprised that the result is 3.
So much for secularism in Europe, and the strict separation of state and religion.