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by blackbrokkoli
2088 days ago
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But those examples do not hold either? The Muhammad story is about Austria (which I did not discuss and do not know a lot about). I don't know much about the religious issue at hand either, but the possibility of getting fined 500€ for accusing people of paedophilia if your claim does not hold does not strike me as such horrendous. Isn't this slander in the US and illegal as well? How is Germany on par with the countries you listed? You may not disturb public peace with speech and not insult people. Example is a dude who printed "The Holy Quran" on toilet paper. Nothing wrong with enforcing human decency via the law. Such insults is also literally what Nazis did in the first stage of the holocaust. Looking at the countries this is supposed to be on par with: Yemen uses blasphemy laws to imprison establishment enemies. Oman is not even on the list. Turkey is extra ironic because there was a comedian who made a parody of the Turkish government and Germany had a diplomatic crisis because Germany refused to do something against it (obv. totally on par). Myanmar put a guy in jail for wearing Buddha headphones. Indonesia's mention is so brief I guess you could say the law sounds similar. Still not seeing the slope, sorry... |
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The right to religious criticism should be absolute.
The reason I bring up the Austrian case is because itw was upheld by the ECHR, which Germany also defers to. To defend the woman in that case from the ECHR's deranged ruling: Scholars estimate that Mohammed married Aisha, his youngest wife, when she was only 6. If that is not paedophilia, I don't know what is.
You bring up libel laws in the US. Historically, they have had a very, very high burden of proof. Only oligarchal authoritarians like Trump try to expand their reach. Libel cases are also exceedingly rare, and if they are brought to court, they are brought to court as a civil matter. And, to top it off, criticism or slander of a figure who is:
- Dead
- Partly mythologized
- A religious figure
is completely fair game under the US doctrine of free speech and religious freedom. In the US I would be just as free to say "Jesus was a gay man" or "Mohammed was schizophrenic" as anything else, and in my opinion this is the proper approach. Anyone should also be allowed to print the text of the Quran on toilet paper or burn the Bible or deface the Talmud — why the hell should that be illegal???
Noam Chomsky (who is an extremely prominent Jewish-American scholar and linguist), is one of the staunchest supporters of free speech, from a leftist position. He even made efforts to defend a French Holocaust denier (holocaust denial is also not something I believe should be illegal). I would recommend this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-oV42OMQoE if you would like to see more on that specific case.
If you take a look of the depicted world map, you'll see what I was referring to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blasphemy_law#/media/File:Blas.... What Germany shares in common with the other countries I named is that blasphemy is a potentially imprisonable offence.
I strongly believe that there are many things which are done far better in the German/European system:
- Healthcare
- Data privacy
- Taxation
- Criminal prosecution/the prison system
- etc.
but there are a few things about the American system which I ascribe extreme value to, chiefly the right to freedom of speech.
I say all of this as a dual German-American citizen myself.