{"id":9537,"date":"2015-01-11T16:15:39","date_gmt":"2015-01-11T16:15:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/?p=9537"},"modified":"2015-01-11T16:15:39","modified_gmt":"2015-01-11T16:15:39","slug":"pascharlie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/pascharlie\/","title":{"rendered":"#PasCharlie"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Je_suis_Charlie.svg\"<\/a>Cross-posted on the Corner<\/a>:
\nThe #JeSuisCharlie message doesn\u2019t appear to be getting through to some.<\/p>\n

The Global Post<\/a><\/em>:<\/p>\n

A Swedish member of parliament reported a far-right leader to the police on Friday for alleged incitement to hatred over a comment related to the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris.<\/p>\n

In a Facebook comment to an article on the killings at the French satirical weekly\u2019s office Wednesday, the party secretary of the Sweden Democrats Bjoern Soeder wrote \u201c\u2018The religion of peace\u2019 shows its face.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe has linked practising Muslims to a terrorist act, it\u2019s extremely offensive,\u201d Veronica Palm, from the ruling Social Democratic party told TV4 news.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis statement is offensive to a group of people and I want to see if it comes under laws against inciting racial hatred,\u201d said Palm.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Because there is a right not to be offended, because Islam is, of course, a race, and because it is absolutely not permitted to question the establishment line about what Islam is or is not.<\/p>\n

We will, of course, have to see what Swedish law actually provides, but the broader point is this: until there is a proper roll-back of laws that make prosecution in cases like this an impossibility it cannot be said that Europe is beginning to be serious about free speech, a right that must be protected for all, even for the likes of Mr. S\u00f6der.<\/p>\n

And what do I mean by that? Well, as the report goes on to note:<\/p>\n

Soeder came under fire from Sweden\u2019s Jewish community in December when he told a Swedish daily that Jews could not be considered Swedish unless they abandoned their religious identity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For more on that controversy, here\u2019s<\/a> the Times of Israel<\/em> from last month:<\/p>\n

Bj\u00f6rn S\u00f6der, party secretary of the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats party and also deputy speaker of parliament, told newspaper Dagens Nyheter there were some groups in Swedish society who were citizens but belonged to other nations \u2014 namely Jews and Sami [Lapps]. <\/p>\n

Asked if a person could not be Jewish and Swedish at the same time, S\u00f6der said, \u201cI think most people of Jewish origin that have become Swedes leave their Jewish identity.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut if they do not do it, it doesn\u2019t need to be a problem. One must distinguish between citizenship and nationhood. They can still be Swedish citizens and live in Sweden. Sami and Jews have lived in Sweden for a long time.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have an open Swedishness, an individual can become Swedish regardless of background,\u201d he said. \u201cBut it requires that they be assimilated.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2026 Last year S\u00f6der and his party presented a motion in parliament to ban the non-medical circumcision of males younger than 18.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s not difficult to see why many Swedes believe that the SD has not moved as far from its extremist roots<\/a> (which are not a distant thing; we are talking about the 1990s) as it likes to claim.<\/p>\n

It is a tragedy that the SD is the only parliamentary party to challenge the consensus<\/a> that prevails in the Swedish political establishment (of left and of what passes in Sweden for right), a consensus that not only favors multiculturalism and mass immigration (which is fine, if in my view, seriously mistaken) but also makes dissent a taboo, something which is not only not fine, but very dangerous indeed when it concerns issues that are quite obviously of serious \u2014 and legitimate \u2014 public concern.<\/p>\n

To borrow those words<\/a> (yet) again from Mark Steyn:<\/p>\n

If the political culture forbids respectable politicians from raising certain topics, then the electorate will turn to unrespectable ones.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Under the circumstances, the rapid rise<\/a> of the SD should not have been that unexpected. In fact, I doubt the party will be too sad about what Ms. Palm has done. Her actions will reinforce its claim to be the only \u2018real\u2019 opposition in Sweden. No less seriously they may well provide yet more encouragement to those in the Islamic world and elsewhere who want the West to jettison what remains of that quaint belief that \u201cfree speech is free speech is free speech. There is no but.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ms. Palm, I should add, has tweeted<\/a> #JeSuisCharlie. Yes really.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted on the Corner: The #JeSuisCharlie message doesn\u2019t appear to be getting through to some. The Global Post: A Swedish member of parliament reported a far-right leader to the police on Friday for alleged incitement to hatred over a comment … 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":[15,711],"tags":[51,1108,456,50,804,541],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9537"}],"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=9537"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9537\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9542,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9537\/revisions\/9542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}