Blasphemy, Bigoty, and #jesuischarlie

In a really interesting discussion of Charlie Hebdo and their satirical cartoons on her show, Melissa Harris-Perry mentioned definitions of bigotry and blasphemy that really help when talking about satire, particularly the kind Charlie Hebdo does, and “punching up.”

This is the corresponding quote from an article by Mahmood Mamdani in which he defines these two concepts:

To understand why courts committed to defending freedom of speech can hold cartoonists responsible for crimes against humanity, we need to distinguish between bigotry and blasphemy. Blasphemy is the practice of questioning a tradition from within. In contrast, bigotry is an assault on that tradition from the outside. If blasphemy is an attempt to speak truth to power, bigotry is the reverse: an attempt by power to instrumentalize truth. A defining feature of the cartoon debate is that bigotry is being mistaken for blasphemy.