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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.
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(Score: 3, Informative) by driverless on Wednesday November 14 2018, @09:45AM (2 children)
Unfortunately this is going to be buried a million flames down, but I guess I'll say it anyway: You need to look at the context of that, not just read a rant in the Murdoch media. The woman was a spokesperson for the FPO, a far-right Austrian party founded by a former SS officer and Nazi Minister of Agriculture. The case went through multiple levels of court hearing, all of whom ruled that what she was saying would class as hate speech, and "amounted to a generalization without factual basis" (claims about Aisha are a staple of anti-Muslim far-right propaganda). It was a carefully-considered decision, nothing like what the Murdoch media has portrayed it as.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday November 15 2018, @07:22PM
Being in favor of the idea that the government should be able to declare any idea illegal to speak out in favor of is begging to have your own ideology declared "hate speech".
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 15 2018, @07:25PM
If we want even more context, we should make clear that EU has no say in free speech. We agreed to the free internal market shit, not a bullshit federation. Germany and Austria clearly has some wounds of the past they are dealing with, so I let them. This can not be enforced as a general ruling in the EU.