AnyBook4Less.com	Find the Best Price on the Web Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Home  |  Store List  |  FAQ  |  Contact Us  |
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money Keyword AuthorISBN

Title: Blasphemy: Verbal Offense Against the Sacred, from Moses to Salman Rushdie by Leonard Williams Levy ISBN: 0-8078-4515-9 Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Pr Pub. Date: February, 1995 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $35.00

Your Country USA Canada United Kingdom Australia Austria Belgium France Germany Italy Netherlands Switzerland Currency AutoUSD CAD GBP EUR AUD CHF Delivery Only cheapest delivery All delivery options Include Used Books Are you a club member of: Barnes and Noble Books A Million Chapters.Indigo.ca

Average Customer Rating: 3.5 (2 reviews)

Rating: 4
Summary: No one said history was pretty!
Comment: I assume from the first reviewer of this book that he hates to admit that evil has been done in the name of Christianity. He has a hard time seeing it done today, because we have a seperation of church and state. Look, this book may come as a shock to many Christian readers, but these are facts we can't deny. For example, America is a beautiful country, but in our history there is racism (KKK), the Civil War and the brutal murder of gay student, Matt Shepard. The same goes true for any other organization/country. What ever has done good, has done bad too.

This book provides a very detailed, factual account of people being killed in the name of Christianity from it's inception up to the present. You read about mennonites (anabaptists) getting executed by Protestants and Catholics, Jews being stripped of their Civil Rights, and everyone else who didn't take Jesus as their saviour. It is truly sick and stupid that the laws in those days prosecuted someone just because of a difference of opinion, espeically religious. How gruesome and brutal were Christians to people who differed with them on an opinion? Well, picture you are a Muslim, and preaching the Koran on the streets of England. First the government burns your books, since they are not pro-Christian. Second, you get whipped over 300 times until you have no flesh on your body. Third offense, you will get your tongue cut off, a "B" burned into your skin for "blasphemer", exiled or executed. Isn't that a good reason, and why our founding fathers established a seperation between church and state?

This is a good book, though very long. But, hey it's a history book, right?

Rating: 3
Summary: How Free the Speech?
Comment: Were it not for the digressions into post-modernist chic, I might be able to give a more resounding endorsement. Nevertheless, Levy did successfully acquaint the reader with the common court precedents for blasphemy in British law, while furnishing modern examples such as the 1976 blasphemy trial of a homosexual poet. Though the traditional branding, mutilation, and execution of blasphemers has stopped in modern-day Britain, Levy points out that the Anglican Church has argued for an extension of the outmoded blasphemy laws to other religions in the wake of the Rushdie affair. Rather than forego the Church of England's privileged status altogether, the Archbishop of Canterbury proposed the use of government coercion to protect all flights of lunatic fancy from their deserved ridicule. Needless to say, the lack of separation of Church and State in Europe, and the diluted freedom of speech provided by speech codes (e.g. laws against the expression of unpopular speech, such as Holocaust denial) surely constitute an important area of debate as far as the limitations of freedom. At present, the only US equivalent I can think of is the attempts to mold hate crimes legislation. Though certainly justice demands proper sanctions for those who violate the rights of others, this acts to punish criminals on the basis of their beliefs rather than actions. What next? Love crimes legislation that reduce a person's sentence if the jury thought they were acting for a more socially acceptable cause?