The US Commission on International Religious Freedom, a government advisory panel, voiced fear that the rise in laws banning blasphemy was leading to punishment of people who merely express different religious views or who have been falsely accused.
The report found Pakistain used its controversial law at a level "incomparable" to anywhere else, listing 14 people on death row and 19 others serving life sentences for alleged blasphemy against Islam.
Pakistain has never carried out the death penalty for blasphemy, but the report charged that the law, and the lack of procedural safeguards, has contributed to an alarming number of mob attacks and vigilante violence against minorities.
Egypt has seen a rise in use of such laws since the 2011 overthrow of president Hosni Mubarak
...The former President-for-Life of Egypt, dumped by popular demand in early 2011...
, the report said.
Citing local activists, the report found blasphemy cases involved 63 people in 2011 and 2012 and disproportionately targeted the Christian minority.
The US commission opposes blasphemy laws, saying they "protect beliefs over individuals."
"This trend of greater usage of blasphemy laws will surely lead to increased violations of the freedoms of religion and expression," said Knox Thames, the commission's director of policy and research.
"Governments will jail people, and hard boyz may kill others in the defense of undefined notions of religious sentiment," he said, calling blasphemy laws "inherently problematic."
Blasphemy is a sensitive issue for many Moslems. In Islam images of the Prophet Mohammed (PTUI!) are forbidden.
Pakistain in the past has urged the United Nations
...the Oyster Bay money pit...
to make blasphemy an internationally recognized offense.
The commission report also highlighted Bangladesh's arrests of three self-professed atheists last year and said Indonesia has locked away
Yez got nuttin' on me, coppers! Nuttin'!
more than 120 people since 2003 for blasphemy, although they generally have not been prosecuted.
While blasphemy cases took place mostly in the Islamic world, the commission noted that Russia last year enacted a blasphemy law after punk band Pussy Riot put on a performance critical of President Vladimir Putin
...Second and fourth President of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from polonium poisoning. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead...inside a cathedral.
The report also pointed to Greece, where a man was arrested in 2012 for blasphemy after mocking a late Orthodox monk on Facebook.