According to the Copenhagen Post (Sept. 18, 2013), Danish-Iranian artist Firoozeh Bazrafkan was convicted under “anti-racism legislation” for posting this blog entry on a newspaper Web site, quoting and endorsing an earlier statement by Lars Kragh Andersen:
I am very convinced that Muslim men around the world rape, abuse and kill their daughters. This is, according to my understanding as a Danish-Iranian, due to a defective and inhumane culture — if you can even call it a culture at all. But you can say, I think, that it is a defective and inhumane religion whose textbook, the Koran, is more immoral, deplorable and crazy than manuals of the two other global religions combined.
“By publishing the statement in the blog, the defendant presented statements in which a group of people are mocked and degraded because of their belief,” the court ruled, and that was enough to make the speech criminal.
I oppose bans on “hate speech” generally, but bans on criticism of religion strike me as especially wrong. Religions are connected to ideologies and to cultures. They can do good and they can do harm. They deserve to be evaluated and criticized, just as any ideologies deserve to be evaluated and criticized.
Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, and any other religions — and their adherents — should have no more immunity from criticism than Communism, libertarianism, liberalism, conservatism, or any other belief system, especially since belief systems produce action systems. Sad to see what has become unsayable in Europe, and what European governments are apparently trying to make unthinkable as well.
Thanks to Walter Olson (Overlawyered) for the pointer.