Category: blasphemy

European Court of Human Rights upholds blasphemy law: Defaming the Prophet Muhammad or his marriage to a six year old girl hurts people’s “religious feelings”

October 25, 2018 • 2:00 pm

I’m gobsmacked, as I hadn’t been aware of this case. This comes from the Andelou Agency, a Turkish website, so it’s not gonna be critical of this decision.

The text:

Strasbourg: Defaming the Prophet Muhammed “goes beyond the permissible limits of an objective debate” and “could stir up prejudice and put at risk religious peace” and thus exceeds the permissible limits of freedom of expression, ruled the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on Thursday, upholding a lower court decision.

The decision by a seven-judge panel came after an Austrian national identified as Mrs. S. held two seminars in 2009, entitled “Basic Information on Islam,” in which she defamed the Prophet Muhammad’s marriage.

According to a statement released by the court on Thursday, the Vienna Regional Criminal Court found that these statements implied that Muhammad had pedophilic tendencies, and in February 2011 convicted Mrs. S. for disparaging religious doctrines.

She was fined €480 (aprox. $547) and the costs of the proceedings.

“Mrs. S. appealed but the Vienna Court of Appeal upheld the decision in December 2011, confirming, in essence, the lower court’s findings. A request for the renewal of the proceedings was dismissed by the Supreme Court on 11 December 2013,” it said.

“Relying on Article 10 (freedom of expression), Mrs. S. complained that the domestic courts failed to address the substance of the impugned statements in the light of her right to freedom of expression.”

On today’s ruling, the ECHR said it “found in particular that the domestic courts comprehensively assessed the wider context of the applicant’s statements and carefully balanced her right to freedom of expression with the right of others to have their religious feelings protected, and served the legitimate aim of preserving religious peace in Austria.”

The court held “that by considering the impugned statements as going beyond the permissible limits of an objective debate and classifying them as an abusive attack on the Prophet of Islam, which could stir up prejudice and put at risk religious peace, the domestic courts put forward relevant and sufficient reasons.”

The statement also added that there had been no violation of Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights, covering freedom of expression.

I suspect that Mrs. S. defamed Muhammed’s marriage to his wife Aisha, whom he married at six or seven and “deflowered” (i.e., raped) at nine. And why, exactly, shouldn’t that be defamed? It happens to be true, so the Austrian woman was simply fined for telling the truth. And that truth is construed as potentially offending Muslims.

But really, look at the bit I’ve put in bold. It’s a blasphemy law they’re enforcing! Muslims “need to have their religious feelings protected” in Austria. This is unconscionable. A democratic country protects a religious minority from having its feelings hurt? Does that go for Christians, too? You’re not allowed to defame Jesus, who might not have even existed? But of course we know that among all faiths these days, it’s Islam who are using the “hurt feelings” excuse to protect their religion from criticism.

This isn’t even Islamophobia: it’s criticism of religion, and most likely criticism of an Islamic practice of marrying and raping young girls. Shame on Austria, and on the European Court of Human Rights. There is no reason for the modern Western democracies to have blasphemy laws. Let’s face it, in Austraia there is no real “freedom of expression”—not if you can’t criticize religion.

Grüß Gott im Himmel!

Italian soccer player suspended for making blasphemous remarks (to himself)

August 30, 2018 • 12:00 pm

As the BBC Sports news reported yesterday (click on screenshot), Italian soccer player Rolando Mandragora was suspended for one game for making “blasphemous remarks.” The thing is, nobody heard them: they were spoken to himself, and authorities deciphered what he said by reading his lips on videos. The crime? Mandragora insulted both God and the Virgin Mary.

An excerpt:

Former Juventus midfielder Rolando Mandragora has been suspended for one Serie A game after he was caught on television cameras shouting “Porca Madonna, Vaffanculo, Dio Cane”, an insult to the Virgin Mary, while also referring to God as a dog.

The outburst from the Italy international came after Sampdoria goalkeeper Emil Eudero saved his shot in a game which Mandragora’s side, Udinese, won 1-0.

The remarks initially went unnoticed by officials during the match, but the Lega Serie A – the competition’s governing body – later took the incident to review and suspended the 21-year-old.

“After acquiring and examining the relevant television images, the player, while cursing without referring to anybody around him, was nevertheless clearly seen by the television images to make blasphemous remarks, visibly identifiable from reading his lips without any margin for reasonable doubt,” a disciplinary report from the Lega Serie A said.

Translation (not given by the BBC): “Madonna is a pig, fuck off, God is a dog.”  Clearly Mandragora was pissed off at the save and cursed, mostly to himself. But that’s against the law! Wikipedia describes the law thusly:

In Italy, under the article 724 of the Penal Code, blasphemy in public is considered as an “administrative offense” and punished with a fine ranging from 51 to 309 €. First introduced in 1930 under Mussolini, blasphemy was decriminalized as per art.57, d.lgs. n.507 of 30 December 1999. As per Corte Costituzionalesentence n.440 of 18 October 1995, the law punishes only blasphemy against the “Deity”.  Article 404 of the Penal Code also punishes public offenses to religion, and has been invoked against artists using religious imagery in satirical art.

As the BBC adds:

There is a strict ban on taking God’s name in vain in Italy, and since 2010, the country’s football association has disciplined players and coaches heard doing so.

Former Juventus captain Gianluigi Buffon has been forced to apologise in the past for uttering the word “Dio” (God). Although, he did once claim that he had in fact said “Zio” – which means uncle.

I’m guessing that if there’s a ban on taking God’s name in vain in Italy, or even saying “Dio”, then at least 95% of Italians have been guilty of blasphemy.

As the BBC notes, some European countries have laws against blasphemy, but they’re not often enforced. Wikipedia includes among those countries Ireland, Austria, Finland, Germany, Poland, Spain, and Sweden. It’s time to take these ridiculous laws off the books.

 

h/t: Paul

At last: Ireland to have a referendum on its blasphemy law

September 27, 2017 • 9:51 am

You probably know, if you’ve hung around here a while, that Ireland has a blasphemy law on the books, which I wrote about five years ago. It was passed in 2009 as the “Defamation Act,” but really just continued a 1937 provision of the Irish Constitution. Here it is (my emphasis):

36.—

(1) A person who publishes or utters blasphemous matter shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable upon conviction on indictment to a fine not exceeding €25,000.

(2) For the purposes of this section, a person publishes or utters blasphemous matter if—

(a) he or she publishes or utters matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion, and

(b) he or she intends, by the publication or utterance of the matter concerned, to cause such outrage.

(3) It shall be a defence to proceedings for an offence under this section for the defendant to prove that a reasonable person would find genuine literary, artistic, political, scientific, or academic value in the matter to which the offence relates.

(4) In this section “ religion ” does not include an organisation or cult—

(a) the principal object of which is the making of profit, or

(b) that employs oppressive psychological manipulation—

  • (i) of its followers, or
  • (ii) for the purpose of gaining new followers.

As I said before, note that it deals solely with religion, and the criterion for its illegality is “intent to create outrage and actual creation of outrage.” (Note, though, that Catholicism could be said to be an exception to their definition of “religion” since it does employ “oppressive psychological manipulation of its followers.”)  The concentration on religion privileges that over other forms of ideology, and gives believers an incentive to become outraged, a tactic that has worked well for Muslims (though not in Ireland).

Now the Defamation Act has been on the books for eight years, and has never been implemented. The government knows what a mess that would be. Nevertheless, they promised several years ago to hold a referendum about getting rid of this antiquated and unenforceable law, but nothing has happened—up to now. Like Ireland’s promise to have a referendum on abortion, the government considers even holding a referendum on such issues to be a hot potato, and no politician wants to be the first to start the ball rolling.

In 2015 I put up a letter that Atheist Ireland, headed by Michael Nugent, wrote to Enda Kenny, the Irish Taoiseach (prime minister), urging that he fulfill his government’s pledge to have a referendum on repealing the blasphemy law. It was signed by 43 people, including me. And now I’m immensely pleased to be informed by John Hammill (Atheist Ireland’s blasphemy activist) that this referendum will indeed take place. As the Atheist Ireland blasphemy site reports:

Atheist Ireland welcomes the announcement today by An Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, that our campaign for a referendum on blasphemy has been successful. There will be a referendum on the blasphemy provision within the Irish Constitution during October of 2018 and Atheist Ireland will be campaigning strongly to reform, update and modernise Article 40.6.1(i). This is one part of the continued lobbying by Atheist Ireland to secularise the Irish Constitution.

. . . Also in 2015, in the context of our meeting with An Taoiseach that included further lobbying on the blasphemy issue, Atheist Ireland published an open letter on this topic. The letter was signed by more than 40 high-profile academics, scientists and intellectuals, providing some very welcome extra weight to our lobbying efforts at that time. Atheist Ireland is grateful for the support of Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker, Lawrence Krauss, Maryam Namazie, Carolyn Porco, Jerry Coyne, Sean Carroll, Daniel Dennett, Andrew Copson, Patricia Churchland and many others for their help and support in this regard. The full list of signatories is available here.

Since then, Atheist Ireland has continued to lobby and campaign on this issue. Our petition for a referendum on blasphemy has exceeded 5,000 signatories.
I have no doubt that without Atheist Ireland’s continual campaigning and pressuring the Irish government to fulfill its promise, this referendum wouldn’t be taking place. I’m fairly confident, too, that the referendum will pass, as a poll of Irish voters taken in 2014 showed that 50% of voters would get rid of the law, 19% said they would vote to retain the law, 26% had no opinion, and 5% said they would not vote. I suspect sentiment has gotten even more liberal since then. So while it’s premature to raise a Guinness to the law’s disappearance, we can hoist one for the good people of Atheist Ireland—one of the secular organizations that actually accomplishes things.

Canada poised to repeal its blasphemy law

June 12, 2017 • 10:00 am

Since 1892, Canada has had an anti-blasphemy law on the books, to wit (from the Criminal C0de):

296. (1) Every one who publishes a blasphemous libel is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years

  • (2) It is a question of fact whether or not any matter that is published is a blasphemous libel.
  • (3) No person shall be convicted of an offence under this section for expressing in good faith and in decent language, or attempting to establish by argument used in good faith and conveyed in decent language, an opinion on a religious subject.

R.S., c. C-34, s. 260.

Now the bit about being exculpated if you give a critical opinion on religion “in good faith and decent language” might seem to be the loophole. But as Peter Bowal and Kelsey Horvat note in a quote given by Canada’s Centre for Inquiry (a group that has long crusaded against that law), the law “remain[s] the most serious form of crimes (indictable), and contain broad, archaic wording which makes their criminal application and enforcement difficult as well as controversial today.”  Bowal and Horvat also indicate that “there is no guidance in the criminal code or in any judicial interpretations as to what “publishes”, “decent language” or  “a religious subject” mean, or generally what constitutes a blasphemous libel”.

The law hasn’t been used much, though in 1980 it was used to charge a theater with showing Monty Python’s “Life of Brian,” though the charges were dropped.

Now, according to Global News and verified by the Government of Canada’s website, an bill to amend Canada’s criminal code has been introduced in the House of Commons by Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould, who represents Vancouver/Granville (she’s a Liberal, of course).  That law not only clarifies provisions of the sexual assault laws, but repeals section 296, with the repeal buried in a list of archaic and unenforceable laws (my emphasis in the bullet points):

Obsolete and/or redundant provisions

The proposed legislation would repeal several Criminal Code offences that were enacted many years ago, but that are no longer relevant or required today, including:

  • Challenging someone to a duel (section 71);

  • Advertising a reward for the return of stolen property “no questions asked” (section 143);

  • Possessing, printing, distributing or publishing crime comics (paragraph 163(1)(b));

  • Publishing blasphemous libel (section 296);

  • Fraudulently pretending to practise witchcraft (section 365); and,

  • Issuing trading stamps (section 427).

It’s about time to strike from the books a law prohibiting religious blasphemy, which doesn’t belong in a progressive country. This hasn’t passed yet, but I’m betting it will.

That doesn’t solve all of Canada’s “first amendment” issues, though, as there are numerous “hate speech laws” that are still on the books, and have been used. See the Wikipedia article on “Hate speech laws in Canada“. Here are two examples of “hate speech” that shouldn’t have been prosecuted, though in both cases I find the opinions prosecuted to be detestable:

In 2005, the Saskatchewan Human Rights Tribunal fined Bill Whatcott, leader of a small group called the Christian Truth Activists, $17,500 because he distributed flyers that had controversial comments about homosexuals.[38] The matter ultimately went to the Supreme Court of Canada where the decision was upheld in part.

In Citron v. Zündel TD 1/02 (2002/01/18) the Tribunal found that the respondent had theories of secret conspiracies by Jews. The respondent posted his theories to the Internet. The Tribunal found that the tone and extreme denigration and vilification of Jews by the respondent was a violation of s. 13(1). The Tribunal ordered the respondent to cease and desist his discriminatory practices.

Neither of these cases would have been prosecuted in the U.S. Let Ernst Zündel promulgate his anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial without being jailed. After hearing him, we can educate ourselves about the evidence for the Holocaust, and he can always be met with counter-speech. For further arguments about why we should let “hateful” speech be aired, read Mill’s On Liberty. 

h/t: Gregory

Richard Dawkins writes to the Irish Times, offering himself for arrest

May 15, 2017 • 2:50 pm

Okay, Ireland, you nation with your stupid blasphemy laws: here’s a good test case for you. Arrest Richard Dawkins!

Here’s a week-old letter from Dawkins to the Irish Times:

Sir, – As a gesture of solidarity with Stephen Fry, I quote a sentence from my book, The God Delusion: “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”

Every one of these adjectives is amply documented, with full biblical citations, in Dan Barker’s book, God: The Most Unpleasant Character in All Fiction.

I shall be giving a public lecture in the National Concert Hall, Dublin, on June 12th, and I shall therefore be available for arrest on a charge of blasphemy.

– Yours, etc,

RICHARD DAWKINS,

New College,

Oxford.

Unlike Stephen Fry, Dawkins will actually be in Ireland when he blasphemes. Now surely he’ll be protected by a loophole in the 2009 Defamation Act, which states, as pointed out by Grania:

It shall be a defence to proceedings for an offence under this section for the defendant to prove that a reasonable person would find genuine literary, artistic, political, scientific, or academic value in the matter to which the offence relates. (Art. 36.3)

 If Dawkins can’t get himself taken in charge of the Gardaí (the Irish cops), then the law is worthless. But we knew that already.

More for Blasphemy Day

May 10, 2017 • 1:00 pm

by Greg Mayer

Following up on the theme for the day, the New York Times reports that in Indonesia, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, the governor of Jakarta, has been convicted of blasphemy against Islam, and has been immediately placed in prison to begin his two year sentence while his lawyers appeal the case. Basuki, a Christian and ethnic Chinese, had succeeded to the governorship after his political ally, Joko Widodo, a Muslim, was elected president. Basuki was widely expected to be elected to the governorship outright, until Islamists argued that the Quran forbade Muslims from voting for non-Muslims.

His offense was arguing that a particular Quranic passage could be interpreted in a more enlightened manner than in the way his opponents interpreted it. From an earlier Times article:

[In an address to fishermen] Mr. Basuki lightheartedly cited a verse of the Quran that warns Muslims against taking Christians and Jews as allies. He said at the time that given Indonesia’s transition to democracy in 1999, it was perfectly acceptable for Muslim voters to choose a Christian in the election for governor in February.

A five judge panel has unanimously found that he’s guilty, evidently confirming that the Quran does indeed forbid Muslims from voting for non-Muslims. One of the groups that demanded Basuki be punished for his blasphemy was Hizb ut-Tahrir, which the Times describes as a group that

… rejects democratic governance and says it aims to create a Pan-Islamic state among predominantly Muslim countries, by force if necessary. The group has been tolerated in Indonesia despite openly rejecting the secular, democratically elected government and the pluralist, multireligious national ideology, known as Pancasila.

Andreas Harsono, an Indonesian human rights researcher, summed it up:

“It’s a sad day, and it’s frightening … If the governor of Indonesia’s largest and most complex city, and who is an ally of the Indonesian president, can be brought down and humiliated this way, what will happen to normal Indonesian citizens?”

____

JAC: Let me add here that Muslim apologists like Reza Aslan always point to Indonesia as an example of an “enlightened” Muslim country.

New Zealand’s blasphemy law on the chopping block

May 10, 2017 • 11:45 am

Reader Gordon called my attention to an article on the Radio New Zealand site (click screenshot to see it) that implies that New Zealand’s blasphemy law may stay in place (the ACT is a political party, and I’ll let Kiwi readers characterize it). But read on, as the headline is misleading.

The law against blasphemy is in section 123 of the Crimes Act of 1961, and says this:

Note that the law expressly applies to “any religious subject”, making it untenable, and also fails to define “blaphemous libel”. Both of these provisions make the law, like that in Ireland, unenforcible. Indeed, this law and its antecedents, which prohibited only blasphemy against the Anglican Church, have been used only once, and nobody was convicted. As Wikipedia notes:

To date the only prosecution for blasphemous libel in New Zealand has been the case of John Glover, publisher of the newspaper The Maoriland Worker in 1922.The Crown laid a charge of blasphemous libel over the 12 October 1921 issue of The Maoriland Worker which included two poems by British poet Siegfried Sassoon. The alleged blasphemy was the closing lines of Sassoon’s poem ‘Stand-to: Good Friday Morning’:

O Jesus, send me a wound to-day,
And I’ll believe in Your bread and wine,
And get my bloody old sins washed white!

The case was tried in the Supreme Court in 1922. The jury returned a verdict of not guilty with a rider: “That similar publications of such literature be discouraged”.

In 1998, the Crown decided not to prosecute Te Papa museum for displaying Tania Kovats’ Virgin in a Condom.  In 2006, the Crown decided not to pursue blasphemy charges against CanWest, a broadcaster, for airing an episode of South Park featuring a menstruating Virgin Mary statue. Usually, such cases must be referred to the New Zealand Attorney-General before they can proceed. However, the Attorney-General usually refuses to pursue blasphemy prosecutions on the basis of free speech objections, as the right to free speech is protected within New Zealand’s Bill of Rights Act 1990.

What harm, then, in a toothless blasphemy law? First, it’s an offense to a democratic and rational society that such laws remain on the books, and an indictment of the cowardice of the politicians who, knowing full well that the law is useless, still refuse to repeal it.  As Grania pointed out today , there have been promises of a national Irish referendum on its blasphemy law, but those promises haven’t been kept. As Grania also mentioned, blasphemy laws like these are “being used to justify and push for more blasphemy laws by groups such as the OIC [the Organization for Islamic Cooperation] at the United Nations.”

At any rate, though the headline looks bad, it’s really not, as the Radio NZ article notes, attempts to repeal the law were inspired by the foolish investigation of Stephen Fry by the Irish Police, the bill is proceeding through the New Zealand legislature, and that even representatives of the Anglican Church in New Zealand have called for deep-sixing the blasphemy law. As reader Gordon told me:

Looks like the (long unused) NZ blasphemy law will finally be repealed.  Don’t be fooled by the headline – the critical bit is “Instead, Labour MP Chris Hipkins tabled an amendment to the Statutes Repeal Bill to delete the crime of blasphemy, so no time would be wasted with a separate bill.”

The Statutes Repeal Bill is currently on its way through Parliament (it’s a non-contentious act where all parties agree to repeal obsolete legislation) and there is now a tabled amendment to that Bill which will repeal the relevant section of the Crimes Act (s 123).