Criminalizing and penalizing blasphemy: the need to adopt a human rights approach in the reform of Indonesia's blasphemy law

The phenomenon of criminalization and penalization of blasphemy continues to be a source of debate around the world until today, including in Indonesia. The first part of this paper analyses the extent to which the blasphemy law in Indonesia is in accordance with the legality and proportionality principle. The second part addresses the legality and proportionality principle according to international human rights standards. Whereas the third part proposes methods to improve the blasphemy law in accordance with the developments in international legal framework. The results argue that the vague formulation of blasphemy can be applied to almost all acts related to religion or belief in Indonesia. Apart from causing a very broad interpretation which puts a great deal of discretion in the hands of judges, the law has and continues to be used to target activities and expressions that should be protected. Therefore, using the measures from new sources related to freedom of religion, Indonesia needs to focus on adopting a method that shifts the criminalization of blasphemy to the eradication of intolerance, discrimination, incitement to violence and violence against persons based on religion or belief, namely hate crimes.