page_title: Blasphemy law
section_title: Netherlands
hierarchical_section_title: Blasphemy law / By country / Historically Christian countries / Netherlands
caption_attribution_description: Nederlands: G.K. van het Reve, met ezel 7 januari 1969
context_page_description: A blasphemy law is a law prohibiting blasphemy, where blasphemy is the act of insulting or showing contempt or lack of reverence to a deity, or sacred things, or toward something considered sacred or inviolable. According to Pew Research Center, about a quarter of the world's countries and territories had anti-blasphemy laws or policies as of 2014.
  Blasphemy laws are commonly used around the world to persecute people for beliefs and activities that do not conform to the majority opinion on religious and sensitive topics, and to suppress criticism of religion. They have been subject to repeated condemnations by human rights organisations and resolutions of the United Nations Human Rights Council. In some parts of the world, blasphemy laws on statute books have not been enforced for many years, but a concerted international campaign since 2015 has sought to repeal these laws in with the hope of further drawing attention to the way these laws are used around the world to persecute religious and political minorities.
context_section_description: With the introduction of the Dutch Criminal Code of 1881, in force since 1886, the Netherlands obtained its first law against blasphemy. The Minister of Justice argued that, although God would be perfectly capable of protecting his own rights, the Dutch legislator had to 'protect the rights of society'.
  In 1932, a bill was proposed to tighten the 1886 law. Parliament was divided between confessional and non-confessional parties, but also between different confessional parties on the question whether the purpose of the bill was protecting God or religion, or religious people. The bill passed on 1 June 1932 with 49 against 44 votes in the House, 28 against 18 votes in the Senate, and was adopted on 4 November 1932.
  Article 147 punished (by up to three months in jail or a fine of the second category (i.e. up to €3,800)) anyone who publicly, orally or in writing or depiction, offends religious feelings by scornful blasphemy. Furthermore, article 429bis prohibited displaying blasphemous material at places visible from the public road. The law came into being in the 1930s after the Communist Party called for Christmas to be dropped from the list of state holidays. The last successful conviction under Article 147 took place in the early 1960s when a student newspaper was fined 100 guilders for satirizing the New Testament. The law against blasphemy complements laws against racial discrimination and incitement to violence.
  In 1966, the Public Prosecution Service prosecuted writer Gerard Reve under Article 147. In his novel Nader tot U ("Nearer to Thee"), Reve describes the narrator's sexual intercourse with God, who is incarnated in a donkey. The court of first instance convicted Reve, but he appealed. In April 1968, an appeals court quashed the conviction. This effectively made the Dutch blasphemy law dead letter.
  In November 2008, Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin expressed the country's coalition government's intent to repeal Article 147. He said the government would strengthen the legislation against discrimination to prohibit any insult to any group of people. In May 2009, the government decided to leave the law as it is. The decision followed a high court ruling in which a man who had put up a poster that read "stop the tumour that is Islam" was found not guilty of insulting a group of people on the grounds of their religion. The decision not to abolish the ban on blasphemy was partly motivated to ensure the support of the orthodox Christian SGP for the minority government in the senate. After a general election in 2012, a new coalition government was formed and a majority of parliament pledged to support a proposal to repeal the blasphemy law.
  In November 2012, parliament decided to overturn the blasphemy laws. It would pass with support from the VVD, but the fundamentalist Christian group SGP were strongly opposed to the measure. According to the SGP, the decision to lift the ban on blasphemy is a "painful loss of a moral anchor and a symptom of a spiritual crisis".
  On 1 February 2014, the law on blasphemy was officially abolished.
caption: Gerard Reve kisses a donkey (1969). Found guilty of 'blasphemy' in 1966 for describing a sex scene with God-turned-donkey in his novel Nader tot U, he successfully appealed in 1968.
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