What's the difference between blasphemy and insult?

Blasphemy


Definition:

  • (n.) An indignity offered to God in words, writing, or signs; impiously irreverent words or signs addressed to, or used in reference to, God; speaking evil of God; also, the act of claiming the attributes or prerogatives of deity.
  • (n.) Figuratively, of things held in high honor: Calumny; abuse; vilification.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Fears over violence in Jakarta as hardline Islamists protest governor’s ‘blasphemy’ Read more The governorship of the capital is a powerful position and was a stepping stone for Joko Widodo to the presidency two years ago.
  • (2) His controversial 1988 book The Satanic Verses, which provoked a religious opinion or fatwa, from the Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini calling for the author's killing as punishment for blasphemy, is still banned in India.
  • (3) But this was, after all, the late 20th century and the rather antiquated British blasphemy laws were something of an irrelevance.
  • (4) To people who have faith that the world can heal itself through the unfettered interaction of economically rational individuals, and that, if capitalism were allowed to operate freely, there would be no more slumps and bubbles because the invisible hand of the market would guide everything to its rightful price, the seasonal rush must seem like an orgy of blasphemy.
  • (5) Chanting “God is greatest”, many in Friday’s protest waved placards calling for Purnama, popularly known as Ahok, to be jailed for blasphemy.
  • (6) During the original trial, much emphasis was placed on the blasphemy of the women doing their dance right in front of the altar.
  • (7) The government also blocked about a dozen websites and blogs to stem the furore over blasphemy, as well as stepping up security for the bloggers.
  • (8) They have pandered to fundamentalism over the blasphemy law rather than facing it down.
  • (9) I have lost two brothers in this war, I swear by the great honour of the southern revolution.” “That’s blasphemy – you should only swear by God,” said the jihadi.
  • (10) At the same time, Christian lobbyists, spotting broadcasters' ring-fencing of the prophet, have increased their own blasphemy-policing.
  • (11) Paris was the place to be, the political atmosphere suited a cartoonist’s work – cartoons fitted with the slogans and graffiti of the time, its poetry.” Willem joined Hara Kiri , Charlie Hebdo ’s precursor, setting himself immediately to work on blasphemy, vicious political satire and “things some people might regard as pornographic”.
  • (12) And in 2013, a lecturer called Junaid Hafeez was jailed after students accused him of committing blasphemy on his Facebook page in an affair which also led to his lawyer being shot dead.
  • (13) As a former Christian and theology graduate, I felt reasonably well qualified to argue my point about blasphemy, but sex is a whole other area – what is acceptable here is a rather more nebulous concept, of course, and there is little objective legislation to help us in matters of taste.
  • (14) Acquittals in blasphemy cases in the Indonesian courts are rare, but Ahok has vowed to continue his campaign and to contest the election.
  • (15) Not even the Spanish Inquisition entailed such delicate, hair-trigger recriminations for blasphemy as the one that set off this MSNBC host yesterday on his little patriotism enforcement crusade.
  • (16) Hundreds camped out until around four in the morning beside the parliament building, demanding Purnama be charged with blasphemy.
  • (17) There is some frankly rather inappropriate cheering at this shout-out to our most potent secular blasphemy, but not, I note, from the two serious young black men sitting next to me.
  • (18) Blasphemy might be an extremely serious offence in the receiving state; other states do not even criminalise it.
  • (19) Today's statement by foreign ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu denounced Liu as a criminal and said his award was a "blasphemy to the peace prize".
  • (20) That was until July 1977, when Mary Whitehouse, self-appointed guardian of national morals, won a blasphemy libel case against Gay News for publishing a poem about a Roman centurion's homoerotic leanings towards the crucified Christ.

Insult


Definition:

  • (v. t.) The act of leaping on; onset; attack.
  • (v. t.) Gross abuse offered to another, either by word or act; an act or speech of insolence or contempt; an affront; an indignity.
  • (v. t.) To leap or trample upon; to make a sudden onset upon.
  • (v. t.) To treat with abuse, insolence, indignity, or contempt, by word or action; to abuse; as, to call a man a coward or a liar, or to sneer at him, is to insult him.
  • (v. i.) To leap or jump.
  • (v. i.) To behave with insolence; to exult.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The variation of the activity of the peptidase with pH in the presence of various inhibitors was investigated in both control and insulted muscle fibres.
  • (2) To study these changes more thoroughly, specific monoclonal antibodies of the A and B subunits of calcineurin (protein phosphatase 2B) were raised, and regional alterations in the immunoreactivity of calcineurin in the rat hippocampus were investigated after a transient forebrain ischemic insult causing selective and delayed hippocampal CA1 pyramidal cell damage.
  • (3) Histopathological studies confirmed that mice fed 933cu-rev died from bilateral renal cortical tubular necrosis consistent with toxic insult, perhaps due to Shiga-like toxins.
  • (4) Combined with histological analysis, these results suggest a more rapid recovery of normal spermatogenesis after physical insult with LAC treatment.
  • (5) Mark Latham's insights, insults and feuds are why he's worth reading | Gay Alcorn Read more BuzzFeed political editor Mark Di Stefano, the reporter who broke the story linking Latham to the less-than-savoury @RealMarkLatham Twitter account , had been chasing Stutchbury for days.
  • (6) Among the various physiological factors involved in the development of a nephrotoxic insult, certain renal transport systems may be important.
  • (7) In addition, PROM is the result of direct bacterial insults or host-mediated autodestruction in response to bacterial presence or challenge.
  • (8) Postmortem biochemical indices may provide a useful adjunct to morphological studies in the identification of antemortem brain insult.
  • (9) This toxic effect, although not seen in intact nigrostriatal systems, may indicate L-dopa toxicity on transplanted DA cells, or on DA cells maximally activated to recover from insult.
  • (10) Under the conditions employed in these studies, repeated occlusions give rise to progressively more prolonged deficits in brain protein synthesis activity, which may thus provide a useful index of the severity of the accumulated ischemic insult.
  • (11) The loss of coronary reserve was less than that previously observed after a 15-min occlusion, suggesting that the magnitude of the postischemic vascular abnormalities increases with the duration of the ischemic insult.
  • (12) We also observed a difference in the pattern and severity of alterations between repeated ischemic insults and single ischemia.
  • (13) Unconsciousness was associated with a brief period of hypotension, so brief that in itself it caused no apparent insult.
  • (14) These findings suggest that NB-818 may be useful for clinical treatment of neurological deficit after an ischemic insult.
  • (15) For example, patients suffering from transfusion-related acute lung injury (TRALI) experience onset of insult within 6 hours of a transfusion and have the presence of leukoagglutinins in their serum.
  • (16) This review article discusses the clinical manifestations and the diagnostic workup of insults to the kidney in patients with cancer.
  • (17) We have recently demonstrated in vitro a potential biological mechanism which could occur in vivo upon inhaling airborne graon dust, thereby constituting a potential inflammatory insult to the respiratory tracts of grain workers.
  • (18) It is hypothesized that transmission failure of interneuronal systems in the initial period following insult may be a general response occurring in wide areas of the central nervous system, and not restricted to areas to which mechanical stress is directly applied.
  • (19) These shape changes may become irreversible and, in fact, they may be encountered in different types of haemolytic disease, suggesting that the echinocytic and stomatocytic shape changes represent two fundamental ways in which red cells react to intrinsic and extrinsic insults.
  • (20) The Labour party erupted into open civil war as Ed Miliband loyalists and supporters of Johann Lamont, the Scottish Labour leader who resigned this weekend, exchanged accusations and insults.