Blasphemy Law Repeal in Northern Ireland Is Overdue | Column

This is a column and reflects the writer’s opinion.

The blasphemy law repeal now moving through Northern Ireland is overdue, and freethinkers should welcome it plainly. Assembly members voted 57 to 24 to abolish the common-law offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel.

Northern Ireland was the last corner of the United Kingdom where blasphemy technically remained a crime. England and Wales scrapped the offence in 2008. Scotland followed in 2024. The final holdout is finally catching up.

Why the blasphemy law repeal matters

The blasphemy law repeal matters even though no one had been prosecuted in living memory. Dormant laws are not harmless. They sit on the books as a signal that the state may still police what people say about religion.

That signal has weight abroad. When democracies keep blasphemy statutes, however unused, they hand cover to governments that jail and execute dissenters. Officials in such states point to Western laws to deflect criticism of their own.

The principle at stake is simple. Ideas, including religious ones, deserve no special immunity from challenge, satire or rejection. A believer’s feelings are real, but hurt feelings cannot be the threshold for criminal law in a free society.

Some worry that repeal leaves a gap. It does not. Laws against harassment, incitement and threats already protect people from genuine harm. Those laws guard individuals, not doctrines, which is exactly the line a secular state should hold.

Credit belongs to the humanist and secularist campaigners who kept pushing when the issue looked like a footnote. Reform of this kind rarely arrives through drama. It comes from patient advocates who refuse to let an unjust law lapse quietly into permanence.

The Justice Bill is expected to clear its final stages this autumn. When it does, the UK will at last speak with one voice on this question. That is worth marking, and worth defending against any attempt to revive control by another name. Our related column on secularism and religious freedom explores the same tension.

Fact basis: opinion column grounded in Humanists UK and National Secular Society reporting on the Northern Ireland Justice Bill blasphemy amendment, 2026. Facts cross-checked; views are the writer’s own.