On 25 October, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) said an Austrian woman’s conviction for making the link between the prophet of Islam and paedophilia didn’t breach her freedom of speech.
Specifically, she was found guilty of ‘publicly disparaging an object of veneration of a domestic church or religious society, namely Muhammed, the Prophet of Islam, in a manner capable of arousing justified indignation.’ This takes as fact that Muhammed is worthy of veneration which is problematic legally and religiously as Muhammed is not ‘worshipped’ by Muslims.
The woman, ES, during two public seminars in 2009 drew attention to the fact (recorded in Islamic writings Sahih al-Bu-khari 7: 62: 64, and in the Qur’an in Surah 65 4 where it talks about how to divorce a pre-pubescent girl) that Muhammad was married to a six-year-old girl called Aisha, and consummated the marriage when she was nine. She said: ‘A 56-year-old and a six-year-old? What do you call that? Give me an example? What do we call it, if it is not paedophilia?’
Violence shapes laws
The ECHR ruled that Austrian courts had ‘carefully balanced her right to freedom of expression with the right of others to have their religious feelings protected’. The court had ‘served the legitimate aim of preserving religious peace’.
This ruling may have opened the door to a new way to shape law: as a religious group threatens or acts violently due to something you don’t like, the law will change, as the law will work to protect those religious feelings in order to preserve the peace.
New Reich?
In a parallel move, the German Government introduced a sweeping law in 2017 concerning online publications. The Act would punish social media platforms with fines if they didn’t swiftly remove ‘hate speech’ defined as such by the German Government. Acts17Apologetics fell foul of this law in a video quoting three Muslim sources where Muhammed had sex with his nine wives in one night.
Video removed
It was suggested that through modern-day eyes, this would be seen as Muhammed being a sex addict. YouTube informed the apologist, David Wood, that the video had been removed from German YouTube under the German Network Enforcement Act. Wood suggested that this law is a 21st-century version of book burning.
