نوع مقاله : علمی- پژوهشی
عنوان مقاله English
نویسنده English
From the perspective of social justice, ethnic, religious, and sectarian diversity should not be perceived as a threat to territorial security but rather as an opportunity for collective flourishing and balanced national development through constructive intercultural engagement. Nevertheless, in Iran - as in other nations - national identities and sacred symbols have occasionally been subjected to defamation by natural or legal persons, whether due to ideological absolutism or under the guise of free expression. Such acts have provoked profound offense among domestic, national, and at times global audiences, inflaming intergroup tensions and public sentiment. Within Iran’s penal system, criminalization and punitive measures, as articulated in both general and specific legal provisions, have been instituted out of necessity to safeguard the underlying values of these protected phenomena. The most recent legislative initiative in this domain is a bill proposed by members of the Islamic Consultative Assembly, designated as Article 608 bis of the Islamic Penal Code (Ta’zirāt). This raises a critical jurisprudential question: To what extent does the substance of this provision substantively address the lacunae in the penal dimensions of this issue? Employing a descriptive-analytical methodology with a doctrinal legal research approach, this study finds that the proposed Article demonstrates both strengths and deficiencies. Positively, it advances the legal framework by conditioning the actus reus of insult upon demonstrable harm to protected categories (e.g., ethnicities, religions) and mandating proportionate complementary punishments. However, it remains vulnerable to substantive critique in several respects: (1) its silence regarding the denigration of recognized non-Islamic faiths where intended to incite social unrest; (2) the absence of explicit recognition of legal persons’ capacity to commit such offenses; and (3) an incomplete sanctions regime - particularly the failure to codify objective and offense-specific aggravating circumstances for sentencing. These omissions undermine the provision’s potential efficacy as a deterrent and its alignment with broader principles of legal precision and equity.
کلیدواژهها English
