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As the days go by our hard won freedoms and liberty are slowly being eroded. In Europe a crushing blow has been made to freedom of speech with a European Court of Human Rights upholding a conviction for saying that the person known as Muhammad ten centuries ago was technically a paedophile based on information in historical texts. The statement was made in reference to Muhammad's marriage to a six year old child name called Aisha. The court found that “Presenting objects of religious worship in a provocative way capable of hurting the feelings of the followers of that religion could be conceived as a malicious violation of the spirit of tolerance, which was one of the bases of a democratic society.”. In giving its ruling that "Muhammad was not a worthy subject of worship" the court has additionally demonstrated a complete misunderstanding as to the religion involved which worships "Allah", a word meaning 'God', not 'Muhammad' who claimed to be a prophet of this god. Freedom of speech is dying.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Sulla on Wednesday November 14 2018, @02:40AM
You brought up some good examples of what was said above. Turkey's continued denial of the genocide they committed and repression of speech saying that it happened makes people question the official story and want to investigate the truth behind it. People don't like being told what they should and shouldn't think, so some people will question whether or not the holocaust happened simply because the government says you cannot talk about it, in the same way people question what Turkey and China did just because they repress speech saying that bad things happened.
I am unaware of anyone, no matter how racist, who denies that slavery existed as an institution in America's past. If the US was to ban saying slavery never happened or ban saying it did happen it would have the opposite result. Through propaganda you can enforce an idea but by banning you can be sure that people will investigate it.
How many of us read the anarchists cookbook, brave new world, of mice and men, etc just because they were either banned for a time or there were attempts to do so?
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam