Diana West comments here on the dismal verdict in the Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff trial in Vienna.
Her crime, if you haven’t followed the case, was to comment disapprovingly on Mohammed’s deflowering of his nine-year-old wife Aisha.
Well, tolerance is paramount in a decent society, I guess.
Meanwhile, Christmas masses have been canceled in Iraq due to fears of anti-Christian violence.
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“as in other nations across the Western world currently transitioning to Shariah”
I’ve seen this absurd claim multiple times on conservative blogs. Can anyone point to actual changes in American or European law that parallels Islamic Law? Or is this one of the many claims that people posit with almost no evidence because everyone else is also?
BTW, I couldn’t agree more with how horrendous of a conviction this is. Moreover as Mrs. Wolff made clear in her defense, the Austrian law is in clear conflict with the European Convention on Human Rights.
That’s a neatly self-contained comment, in that it presents a question in the first paragraph which it answers in the second. A fine rhetorical flourish.
Haha, was worried that you might answer my comment that way.
The law she was convicted on was the “§ 188 : Vilification of Religious Teachings” which apply to any religious teachings, not just islamic tenets.
The creation and implementation of the law has nothing to do with some islamification (whatever that would mean) of Europe and more to do with Europe’s horrible record on free speech since the Holocaust. Laws that were codified after the Holocaust that criminalized the denial of its historical truth opened a can of worms. These most recent laws are not about islam as much as they are an awful continuation of that legal legacy. Btw, both sides of the political spectrum have used these laws to silence their opponents.
Worried, or hoping? If this was your point, why not say so in the first place?
I do agree with you that the radical non-discrimination characteristic of the modern liberal state, and in particular its codification in European law, is essentially a horrified ideological hysteresis in reaction to Nazism.
Here we have sharia-compliant anti-blasphemy laws already on the books — rarely used until recent years — and now see them consistently applied to critics of Islam: people like Lars Hedegaard, Geert Wilders, and Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff. Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ is displayed in Europe and attracts no legal attention. How do you think a Piss Mohammed would go over?
As the academic quoted in Ms. West’s piece noted:
This comment from the article says it all:
“If you cannot say that Islam is a backward religion and that Muhammad is a criminal, then you are living in an Islamic country, my friend, because there you also cannot say such things. I may say Christ was a fag and Mary was a whore, but apparently I should stay off of Muhammad.”
Certainly, the comment about “transitioning to Shariah” is an exaggeration, but it is meant to be that. It very effectively states the case in bold terms. The fact that Strangelove commented on it proves that it works.
Just so, Dom.