{"id":7876,"date":"2012-10-14T18:28:25","date_gmt":"2012-10-14T18:28:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/?p=7876"},"modified":"2012-10-14T18:28:25","modified_gmt":"2012-10-14T18:28:25","slug":"or-maybe-the-line-crumbles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/or-maybe-the-line-crumbles\/","title":{"rendered":"Or Maybe The Line Crumbles"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Writing in The Washington Post<\/em>, Jonathan Turley notes the West\u2019s retreat from freedom of expression. The whole article is well worth reading, but here\u2019s a key extract:<\/p>\n

[Blasphemy law is] the oldest threat to free speech, but it has experienced something of a comeback in the 21st century. After protests erupted throughout the Muslim world in 2005 over Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad, Western countries publicly professed fealty to free speech, yet quietly cracked down on anti-religious expression. Religious critics in France, Britain, Italy and other countries have found themselves under criminal investigation as threats to public safety. In France, actress and animal rights activist Brigitte Bardot has been fined several times for comments about how Muslims are undermining French culture. And just last month, a Greek atheist was arrested for insulting a famous monk by making his name sound like that of a pasta dish.<\/p>\n

Some Western countries have classic blasphemy laws \u2014 such as Ireland, which in 2009 criminalized the \u201cpublication or utterance of blasphemous matter\u201d deemed \u201cgrossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion.\u201d The Russian Duma recently proposed a law against \u201cinsulting religious beliefs.\u201d Other countries allow the arrest of people who threaten strife by criticizing religions or religious leaders. In Britain, for instance, a 15-year-old girl was arrested two years ago for burning a Koran.<\/p>\n

Western governments seem to be sending the message that free speech rights will not protect you \u2014 as shown clearly last month by the images of Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the YouTube filmmaker, being carted away in California on suspicion of probation violations. Dutch politician Geert Wilders went through years of litigation before he was acquitted last year on charges of insulting Islam by voicing anti-Islamic views. In the Netherlands and Italy, cartoonists and comedians have been charged with insulting religion through caricatures or jokes.<\/p>\n

Even the Obama administration supported the passage of a resolution in the U.N. Human Rights Council to create an international standard restricting some anti-religious speech (its full name: \u201cCombating Intolerance, Negative Stereotyping and Stigmatization of, and Discrimination, Incitement to Violence and Violence Against, Persons Based on Religion or Belief\u201d). Egypt\u2019s U.N. ambassador heralded the resolution as exposing the \u201ctrue nature\u201d of free speech and recognizing that \u201cfreedom of expression has been sometimes misused\u201d to insult religion.<\/p>\n

At a Washington conference last year to implement the resolution, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton declared that it would protect both \u201cthe right to practice one\u2019s religion freely and the right to express one\u2019s opinion without fear.\u201d But it isn\u2019t clear how speech can be protected if the yardstick is how people react to speech \u2014 particularly in countries where people riot over a single cartoon. Clinton suggested that free speech resulting in \u201csectarian clashes\u201d or \u201cthe destruction or the defacement or the vandalization of religious sites\u201d was not, as she put it, \u201cfair game….\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Enshrining the heckler\u2019s veto\u2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Writing in The Washington Post, Jonathan Turley notes the West\u2019s retreat from freedom of expression. The whole article is well worth reading, but here\u2019s a key extract: [Blasphemy law is] the oldest threat to free speech, but it has experienced … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[746,15],"tags":[51],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7876"}],"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=7876"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7876\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7879,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7876\/revisions\/7879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}