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"In Europe, Speech Is an Alienable Right: [the European Court of Human Rights] upheld an Austrian woman’s conviction for disparaging the Prophet Muhammad." htt

• mcguire 6y ago
  "She held “seminars” in which she presented her view that Muhammad was indeed a child molester. Dominant Islamic traditions hold that Muhammad’s third wife, Aisha, was 6 at the time of their marriage and 9 at its consummation. Muhammad was in his early 50s. The Austrian woman repeated these claims, and the Austrian court ruled that she had to pay 480 euros or spend 60 days in the slammer. The ECHR ruled that Austria had not violated her rights." So it appears that she set out to attack Islam and then received a relative slap-on-the-wrist for it. Neither of those affect the principles, but still....
  • neartheplain 6y ago
    There should be nothing illegal about “attacking” a religion with words, all the moreso if those words are factually accurate.
    • erichocean 6y ago
      It's incitement. Donald Trump was just impeached for the same thing.
      • Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
        I think everyone knows that in this new era of US politics the president will be impeached at least once every year after his party will lose the House.
      • rubyist5eva 6y ago
        Absolutely ridiculous. Unless you are credibly telling people to actually go and commit violence, it is no such thing.
        • ars 6y ago
          Trump did not "credibly tell[] people to actually go and commit violence". He "set the stage" as it were, and people did what they did. It's really not that different from what the women did: She got people upset about Islam.
          • neartheplain 6y ago
            Directly after Rudy told the crowd “let’s have trial by combat!”, the President told his followers to march on the capitol. Then he watched them lay siege to the capitol on TV for hours before half-heartedly telling them to go home. To me, that’s credible incitement to violence. Making factual statements about Islam is not incitement to violence. The woman did not want or ask those who dislike her remarks to get violent or lose self-control.
            • rubyist5eva 6y ago
              I'm 100% on board with charging Rudy with incitement, but the charge against Trump himself is spurious at best.
          • rubyist5eva 6y ago
            "I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard. Today, we will see whether Republicans stand strong for integrity of our elections. But whether or not they stand strong for our country, our country. Our country has been under siege for a long time. Far longer than this four year period." "So we are going to--we are going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue, I love Pennsylvania Avenue, and we are going to the Capitol, and we are going to try and give--the Democrats are hopeless, they are never voting for anything, not even one vote but we are going to try--give our Republicans, the weak ones because the strong ones don't need any of our help, we're try--going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country. So let's walk down Pennsylvania Avenue."
      • Layke1123 6y ago
        It's not incitement to call a child pedophile a child pedophile unless you approve of said child pedophile. It's really quite simple.
    • mcguire 6y ago
      Going out of your way to piss other people off is a poor idea. You may feel that it should be legal (at least until it affects you). Other people may feel otherwise.
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
  • rubyist5eva 6y ago
    All of those things are true and are common knowledge among those with even a modicum of knowledge about the religion.
    • mcguire 6y ago
      All religions are frankly horrific at one point or another. And all of the countries (that I'm aware of) that are officially atheist are rather unpleasant, I think you might agree. Everyone's family tree is not an acyclic graph, and contains some ugly people. All of this up, in detail, is true, and everyone knows it. Having "seminars" on it simply makes it a club to be used to beat on someone you don't like. (Doing that here will likely get Dang to rough me up, perhaps even before I have pissed you off. And rightfully so; see the guidelines.) The bottom line is, the Moslems I've known have been better people than anyone I've met who believes rights and truth are the only limits on what they would say.
  • eznzt 6y ago
    She said Muhammad was a pederast, which is correct, according to the Quran.
    • mcguire 6y ago
      Out of curiosity, what do she plan to do with that information? Why did she say it?
    • freeflight 6y ago
      According to the Bible God "came over" a 12 year old Mary, sneaking into her bedroom at night like some creepy uncle, to "pop her cherry" before her newly wed husband Joseph could. The child of that came to be known as.. Jesus. Which should be a stark reminder that all Abrahamic religions have their roots based in such absurd and ancient practices that none of them hold up much to scrutiny under modern standards except when framed solely around an entirely fictional "Good guy miracle making baby Jesus".
      • throwaway568468 6y ago
        I can't find any biblical source for the supposed age of Mary. Do you have a passage from the Bible in mind?
• glogla 6y ago
  Here's the actual judgement from ECHR: [1] It is an interesting reading - it gives a very different impression than the article. According to the document, she claimed Muhammad was a pedophile in a series of seminars "Basics of Islam" that pretended to be objective courses but were organised by a far-right political party. The judgement also mentions that saying something offensive or untrue on purpose and then claiming "it was just my opinion" doesn't protect you from repercussions, that you are allowed to criticise current practices of religion but not on bases of what someone allegedly done hundreds of years ago when societal standards were different, and that fine 480 Euro is on the low end of a range and not disproportionate. So as I understand it, a far right person was deliberately shit-stirring in a propaganda seminar and got slap on the wrist (fine of ~ 15 % median wage) to be more careful next time. [1]: https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng#{"itemid":["002-12171 https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng#{"itemid":["002-12171"]} EDIT: the link doesn't seem to work properly, you'll have to copy-paste it.
  • h_anna_h 6y ago
    > but not on bases of what someone allegedly done hundreds of years ago when societal standards were different Guess we can't legally criticize people for owning slaves now.
    • glogla 6y ago
      Oh I'm sure you can. The ruling doesn't say that. The ruling says that when you do it in context of pretend-seminar that's far right propaganda, and you do it mostly to to anger and hurt people to divide society - then when you get fine of 480 EUR your human rights are not violated.
      • h_anna_h 6y ago
        > The ruling doesn't say that. Your post does however.