{"id":3981,"date":"2010-03-21T15:19:04","date_gmt":"2010-03-21T23:19:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/wordpress\/?p=3981"},"modified":"2010-03-21T15:19:04","modified_gmt":"2010-03-21T23:19:04","slug":"blasphemy-laws-by-other-means","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/blasphemy-laws-by-other-means\/","title":{"rendered":"Blasphemy Laws (By Other Means)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.timesonline.co.uk\/tol\/news\/uk\/article7069734.ece\" target=\"_blank\">Here\u2019s <\/a>a story from the London <em>Times<\/em> on how the Britain\u2019s libel laws may be used to do their bit in stamping down free speech:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>UP TO 95,000 descendants of the prophet Muhammad are planning to bring a libel action in Britain over \u201cblasphemous\u201d cartoons of the founder of Islam, even though they were published in the Danish press.<\/p>\n<p>The defamation case is being prepared by Faisal Yamani, a Saudi lawyer acting for the descendants, who live in the Middle East, north Africa and as far afield as Australia.<\/p>\n<p>Mark Stephens, a British lawyer who has seen a \u201cpre-action\u201d letter sent by Yamani to 10 Danish newspapers, said it \u201cspecifically says\u201d he will launch proceedings in London.<\/p>\n<p>Yamani is expected to justify the action by claiming that the cartoons, including one of Muhammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban, were accessible in Britain on the internet\u2026<\/p>\n<p>\u2026Stephens said the descendants could argue that the cartoons \u2014 which first appeared in the Jyllands-Posten newspaper in 2005, sparking violent protests around the world \u2014 were a direct slur on them.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDirect descendants of the prophet have a particular place within Muslim society . . . By effectively criticising and making fun of the prophet you are, by implication, holding them up to scandal, contempt and public ridicule,\u201d he said. \u201cSo it may be that they will suffer some kind of damage among their own community. The question is, is that defamatory in English law?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Good Grief<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here\u2019s a story from the London Times on how the Britain\u2019s libel laws may be used to do their bit in stamping down free speech: UP TO 95,000 descendants of the prophet Muhammad are planning to bring a libel action &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/blasphemy-laws-by-other-means\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[9],"tags":[51,434,480,50],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3981"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3981"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3981\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3982,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3981\/revisions\/3982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}