Programming note: Aside from Tucker tonight (just ahead of the big Trump rally with Rush), I'll be here tomorrow, Election Day in the United States, for another Clubland Q&A taking questions from Mark Steyn Club members live around the planet at 4pm North American Eastern time. For the time in your neck of the woods, please check local listings.
~Following The Mark Steyn Show's Free Speech Forum, many readers have asked me to comment on the recent decision by the European Court of Human Rights, summarized in this headline:
Calling Prophet Muhammad a Pedophile Does Not Fall Within Freedom of Speech: European Court
And yet, oddly, calling Muhammad a prophet now seems to be binding on non-Muslim headline writers. I don't really have anything to say about this case that I haven't said a decade and a half back and at great length in my book America Alone (personally autographed copies of which, etc, etc) - to whit, absent any reversal of the demographic trends, some of the oldest nations in Christendom would soon beginning making their accommodations with an ever more assertive Islam.
But, alas, nobody who matters listened to me, and thus "soon" has now arrived - which is why the most powerful European institutions (courts, media, police, bureaucracy) are increasingly eager to shovel core western liberties into the landfill.
With regard to this particular case, I wrote it about it at the time - seven long years ago:
Consider the case of Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, a Viennese housewife who has lived in several Muslim countries. She was hauled into an Austrian court for calling Mohammed a pedophile on the grounds that he consummated his marriage when his bride, Aisha, was nine years old. Mrs. Sabbaditsch-Wolff was found guilty and fined 480 euros. The judge's reasoning was fascinating: 'Paedophilia is factually incorrect, since paedophilia is a sexual preference which solely or mainly is directed towards children. Nevertheless, it does not apply to Mohammad. He was still married to Aisha when she was 18.'
Ah, gotcha. So, under Austrian law, you're not a pedophile if you deflower the kid in fourth grade but keep her around till high school. There's a useful tip if you're planning a hiking holiday in the Alps this fall. Or is this another of those dispensations that is not of universal application?
We now know the answer to that question. For the record, I have met Mrs Sabaditsch-Wolff just once - at the European Parliament a few years back. She is a most forceful and engaging personality. You get no sense of that from the Court's decision, of course, where the appellant has degenerated to a mere set of initials - "E S". One of the revolting aspects of Continental "justice" is the way the police and media preference for the non-identification of "victims" has expanded to a general denial of the specific humanity of those who come before the courts. I had cause the other day, over a recent filing re that litigious CRTV tosser Cary Katz, to recall the ancient legal principle that the public has the right to every man's evidence. But, increasingly, not in Europe. So Mrs Sabaditsch-Wolff is now "E S".
The ruling itself is a sobering read. You'll recall a few years back that President Obama assured us that "the future will not belong to those who slander the Prophet of Islam". De facto, that appears to be true, but de jure it's a problematic concept in that, in English law and elsewhere, it's not technically possible to "slander" a bloke who's been six foot under for 1,400 years. You can't libel the dead. So instead the Euro-jurists have been forced to take refuge in the slippery concept (very familiar to those of us who've been ensnared in Canada's "human rights" machinery" of "balance":
In today's Chamber judgment 1 in the case of E.S. v. Austria (application no. 38450/12) the European Court of Human Rights held, unanimously, that there had been:
no violation of Article 10 (freedom of expression) of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The case concerned the applicant's conviction for disparaging religious doctrines; she had made statements suggesting that Muhammad had had paedophilic tendencies .
The Court found in particular that the domestic courts comprehensively assessed the wider context of the applicant's statements and carefully balanced her right to freedom of expression with the right of others to have their religious feelings protected...
Whoa, hold it right there. There was "no violation" of freedom of expression because the courts "carefully balanced" freedom of expression with the right of others to have their religious feelings protected - and came down on the side of protecting feelings rather than freedom of expression.
The late Jennifer Lynch, QC, then head of the Canadian "Human Rights" Commission, used to talk about "balancing" free speech with other rights - and, then as now, "balancing" is code for nullifying: If your right to free speech has to be balanced with people's "feelings", then as a practical matter there is no free speech.
There is also no truth: It is not the defendant who "had made statements suggesting that Muhammad had had paedophilic tendencies" but the Hadith, which after the Koran are the most sacred foundational texts of Islam and in whose literal truth Muslims are enjoined to believe:
[60] What about he, who consummated marriage with a girl of nine
5158- Urwa narrated: The Messenger of Allah 'Allah's blessing and peace be upon him' married A'isha when she was six years old, and consummated his marriage with her when she was nine. She remained with him nine years (till he died).
So it's not that it's illegal to "suggest" that the Big Mo "had paedophilic tendencies", it's just illegal to suggest there's anything wrong with that. As I wrote seven years ago, this dispensation is not of universal application. As our old friend Douglas Murray points out, if Mohammed had been a Radio 1 disc-jockey co-presenting "Top of the Pops" with Jimmy Savile circa 1973, he'd be in big trouble right now. Because a man in bell-bottoms and a cheesecloth shirt who copped a feel during the intro to "All the Young Dudes" isn't merely a suggestion of paedo tendencies, but a copper-bottomed confirmation thereof that the police will devote massive resources to prosecuting forty years on.
On the other hand, if you spent (like the girls I met two years ago) a decade of your life being passed around dozens, hundreds of "Asian" men in Rotherham, Telford, Rochdale, Oxford, Bristol, Sheffield, Newcastle and on and on, that's rather bad luck on your part but it's not really a "suggestion" of anything prosecutable, is it? Especially if you're suggesting that there might be any connection between the relaxed attitude to child sexual abuse that one observes in, ahem, certain communities throughout Europe and scriptural authorities that might provide a justification thereof. As the European Court noted:
The national courts found that Mrs S. had subjectively labelled Muhammad with paedophilia as his general sexual preference, and that she failed to neutrally inform her audience of the historical background, which consequently did not allow for a serious debate on that issue.
That is a disturbing basis on which to license speech. The full decision goes even further, and is a revealing glimpse of the state's willingness to shrivel "free speech" to the point where the term is rendered meaningless:
The Regional Court further stated that anyone who wished to exercise their rights under Article 10 of the Convention was subject to duties and responsibilities, such as refraining from making statements which hurt others without reason and therefore did not contribute to a debate of public interest. A balancing exercise between the rights under Article 9 on the one hand and those under Article 10 on the other needed to be carried out. The court considered that the applicant's statements were not statements of fact, but derogatory value judgments which exceeded the permissible limits. It held that the applicant had not intended to approach the topic in an objective manner, but had directly aimed to degrade Muhammad. The court stated that child marriages were not the same as paedophilia, and were not only a phenomenon of Islam, but also used to be widespread among the European ruling dynasties.
Great. So maybe in Rotherham they should just start marrying the six-year-olds and all will be well. It should hardly be necessary to state that freedom of speech except for "statements which hurt others" and do "not contribute to a debate" or "approach the topic in an objective manner" is not freedom of speech at all, but merely-narrowly construed state-regulated speech. And in Europe the courts are perfectly cool with that:
The interference with the applicant's freedoms under Article 10 of the Convention had therefore been justified. As to the applicant's argument that those who participated in the seminar knew of her critical approach and could not be offended, the Court of Appeal found that the public seminar had been offered for free to young voters by the Austrian Freedom Party Education Institute, and at least one participant had been offended, as her complaints had led to the applicant being charged.
That was an anonymous undercover "journalist" - because the media regard "E S" as a greater threat than the Islamization of Austria.
I see that Irish voters have just voted to repeal their ancient and unused (Christian) blasphemy laws following a similar repeal a decade ago in England and Wales. Scotland and Northern Ireland retain them, so the advice on either side of the Irish Sea is, if minded to Christian heresy, take a short drive south. But where do you motor if minded to Islamic apostasy? From the Court's conclusion:
The Court found in conclusion that in the instant case the domestic courts carefully balanced the applicant's right to freedom of expression with the rights of others to have their religious feelings protected, and to have religious peace preserved in Austrian society
The Court held further that even in a lively discussion it was not compatible with Article 10 of the Convention to pack incriminating statements into the wrapping of an otherwise acceptable expression of opinion and claim that this rendered passable those statements exceeding the permissible limits of freedom of expression.
The right "to have religious peace preserved in Austrian society": Good luck with that. There will be much more of this: In the interests of "religious peace", the prohibitions of Islam are being extended to infidels, and the linguistic contortions of courts and media and police and bureaucrats confirm that Europe has moved on to the next tragic stage of its civilizational suicide: rationalizing its surrender.
~We had a busy weekend at SteynOnline starting with the aforementioned special Free Speech edition of The Mark Steyn Show, in which Kathy Shaidle, Tal Bachman, Andrew Lawton and I chewed over the subject with the help of a live audience of Mark Steyn Club members. Our Saturday movie date celebrated a cinematic classic, Fellini's Nights of Cabiria. And on the eve of the midterm elections our Sunday Song of the Week offered the biggest hit in the gubernatorial songbook: "You Are My Sunshine." If you're fearful that your sunshine is about to get taken away tomorrow, or that in Europe it's already been taken away, we hope one or two of the foregoing will provide some consolation.
The Mark Steyn Show is made possible through the support of Mark Steyn Club members, as is our monthly series of audio adventures, Tales for Our Time, the latest of which will be launching this Friday. We'd love to have you on board if you're so inclined.
If you prefer live stage performance, the legendary Dennis Miller and the not so legendary me will be together for the first time in a mini-tour of Pennsylvania and western New York. You can pre-book tickets for Reading, Syracuse, Wilkes-Barre and Rochester - and at all four shows there's a special opportunity to meet Dennis and me after the show.
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The man/country of the hour on this stuff is actually Italy, for offering asylum to Asia Bibi. That's courage and the right thing to do.
I'm generally a very positive, optimistic person, but I have to admit, columns such as this one make me weep for the future.
What's especially sad is that if you ask many Americans about cases like these, they'll just shrug and say, that can't happen here, we have the first amendment. Then you read about the many youngsters who think banning "hurtful" speech is warranted and you realize, this is our future.........
Pardon requested if this is anything similar to previous comments; I'm a bit late to read this post.
My following statement is one of faith, personal and voluntary vs. one of group association and mandatory. Jesus is my Messiah. I am not compelled to demand anyone else express this personal belief, but I'll be damned if I accept any order to call Mohammed either "a Prophet" or "the Prophet", much as I would reject the EU compelling non-Christians to refer to Christ as "Messiah Jesus".
Perhaps there is a need now, to call him "Prophet Muhammad" in order to distinguish him from the millions of other Muhammads (choose your desired spelling) in Europe and the UK. One can't be certain if the reference to Muhammad is to the latest Muhammad committing a jihadist attack or raping young girls or beheading infidels as part of ISIS before returning "home" to indoctrinate people in Brussels or wherever.
Roy Moore should have self-identified as a Muslim.
Some might remember "Piss Christ," an artwork subsidized by the US government. So, you can say what you like about Christianity, and obviously, Jews are open season. "The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time." If ever.
I'll end my time today with this: We have a religion and a political base that believe that if you say anything offensive, if you say anything bad about them, if you even bring up the truth about their behavior, that violence is justified regardless of the outcome. Is this what we want the future to be? A future where being offended is justification for killing someone? With this mentality, expect to see corporal punishment in schools again. The rod will be back and even more aggressive than before if we allow this to continue.
The Left in general is getting there. Violence and assault are considered justification, it is only a matter of time before murder will be "explained" by someone being very offended by the election of Trump.
I'll add with two quotes on freedom of speech. Hope you like them.
"The moment you say that any idea system is sacred, whether it's a religious belief system or a secular ideology, the moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes impossible."
[Defend the right to be offended (openDemocracy, 7 February 2005)]"
― Salman Rushdie
"How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensual-ism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property – either as a child, a wife, or a concubine – must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the faith: all know how to die but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome."
― Winston Churchill, The River War
The following statement you're about to read is now a lie thanks to the EU:
"Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."
― United Nations, Universal Declaration of Human Rights
They've replaced it with this, a revised take on the pig's revised commandments from Geroge Orwell's novel Animal Farm:
"All people are equal, but some people are more equal than others."
Clearly, we now know who is considered "more equal" to the EU and the globalist elites, don't we?
And just like in Animal Farm the following happens,
"Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."
The very people Europe allowed to be in charge will be just as bad as the immigrants they let in and in the end, there will be no difference between Europe and the Middle-East.
It was a flawed statement from the UN to begin with. The universe doesn't declare human rights. According to Psalm 19:1, the universe declares the glory of God. God, not government, endows our "unalienable rights." If Europeans wants to protect its rights from Allah, they'll have to claim them from government, not by government, the way Americans do. Otherwise, those "rights" are alienable - as was learned in a building that looks like it landed on France from another planet.
At least the Pakistani courts acquitted their blasphemer.
There is no right to have your religious feelings protected; and if they've made such a law why doesn't it extend to all religions? Courts, and the police are just making up law on the fly now.
So according to the European Court of Human Rights you will be in big, big trouble if you call someone a mother****** unless you have bona fide proof that they have actually done that. Or should it be that they are actually performing that act at the exact moment you called them that. Who knows where literalness will take the judges?
The only thing that has prevented Europe from descending into malignant forms of tyranny for over 250 years has been the courage and resolution of Britain. More often than not, Britain has stood alone against a European tyrant who ruled only thru terror and widespread fear of the central autorities. Despite this history of failure, the EU has not embraced English Common Law and the rights of individuals, but instead seems intent on resurrecting practices and priorities that are a curious amalgam of tyrannical edicts gussied up in pretty language from the French Revolution. It's all lipstick on a pig.
Brexit is the last best hope for the common man in Europe. It's strange that they don't recognize it. But then again, their history in the last three centuries is remarkable mainly for the absence of any people with the stature of a Washington, Burke,, Lincoln, or Churchill. They are ruled by mediocrities embedded in a permanent and unaccountable bureaucracy.
Hi All,
Can I draw every ones attention to a truly courageous decision by Judges in Pakistan, that The European Court of Human Rights might direct their attention to and hang their heads in shame. Pakistan's Supreme Court on Wednesday overturned the conviction of a Christian woman sentenced to death for blasphemy against Islam's Prophet, ordering her to be freed if she was not accused of any other crime.
Chief Justice Saqib Nisar overturned the conviction by the Lahore High Court that had sentenced Asia Bibi, a mother of four, to death in 2010. She has been held at an undisclosed location for security reasons and is expected to leave the country. Why would she need to leave?
Individuals have already been murdered for supporting the contention that a Christian drinking from the cup of a Muslim - Mrs Bibi's crime - should not be punishable by death. Her lawyer has fled the country. No wonder there are some loose bowels in the EC of HR when it comes to 'offence'.
And by the way, what happens when all restraints are removed from Pakistan? Never mind about Iran GETTING a nuclear weapon, Pakistan already has them !!!
The European Court of Human Rights Building is a brutally malevolent looking piece of surgical steel and glass which looks as inspiring and ennobling as an oil refinery while lacking any utility which might excuse its ugly form.
It would not surprise me if rulings coming out of that edifice were to favor the strong over the weak.
The silos seem like an appropriate visual metaphor. (Mark once used the analogy of Justin's socks— ie. Ramadan vs Rainbow themed— to explain the role of "human rights" bodies in "maintaining harmony" between various identity groups.)
Interestingly, the main link above also cites a European Union Court of Justice "human rights" ruling:
PRESS RELEASE No 92/18
Luxembourg, 26 June 2018
Judgment in Case C-451/16 MB v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Change of gender and retirement pension).
Somebody's closing in on his/her bucket list.
It's "her" bucket list, Sol. (Pension eligibility at age 60 for a woman, versus age 65 for a man, in this case.)
Nice non-work, if you can get it.
Has there been some sort of new Anschluss I haven't heard about? This is the autobahn of demography shift.
If I were to teach a class on legal ethics I would use the European Court of Human Rights decision as the quintessential example of equivocation, obfuscation, and prevarication. Not to mention that the "court" and its partnering institutions are perfectly demonstrating how the road to hell is paved with good intentions. But, hey, the fine elites involved can pat themselves on the back about what they thought they were trying to accomplish as they drag their nation and fellow citizens into the abyss.
Andrew McCarthy had a piece about this on National Review Online a couple of days ago. Some French fellow, who is either a very avid typist or just has the text in a format where he can paste it into any comments page, posted the relevant language and pointed out that the European Convention on Human Rights protects all religions from hurtful attacks. He then dismissed "ES" as a right-wing activist and McCarthy's article as "click bait." Not mentioned was whether anyone - and in particular, any Muslim - has been hauled before the tribunal for insulting Christianity. At least in the US, we still have the First Amendment, although for how long is a matter of conjecture.
Mark, you were talking about "denormalization" not long ago and on the Free Speech episode of your show. It seems that those who are not threatened, intimidated, sued, or murdered to make them silent are put through an extensive "denormalization" process, a de-humanizing process that leads to a reducto ad absurdum, non-human status. Now we have "E.S" and a few years ago we had Molly Norris.
If you don't get with the program-you must either self-vanish, or be banished, figuratively and/or literally. This maniacal methodology used to be the exclusive purview of either excitable fervent individuals or the official policy of the governments of decrepit, rogue, terrorist states.
In a very short period of time, it has evolved into public policy wildly enthusiastically adopted by Western governments. What's next?
The reason for the "Human's Rights Court" decision is obvious - Sheer cowardice. If they had upheld the free speech rights of "E.S." this would have meant trouble, inconvenience and several lug nuts tossed into the smoothly meshing gears of the ever-expanding EU "Human Rights" bureaucracy
As I know Mark is, I am appalled and physically sickened that the same weasel-like Euro-bigwigs who "marched in solidarity" chanting "Je suis Charlie'" after the Charlie Hebdo massacre are now doing the work of the killers for them. The idea of "balancing" the right of free expression against the "religious feelings of others" seems to go in only one direction and we know where that is. Where's Richard Dawkins when you need him? And of course once we have established the precedent that insults to "the Prophet" are forbidden, what other forms of expression and ideas will go to the wall because the the "sensitivities" of this or that group are offended?
It is clear that the smog of a cowardly, hole-in-corner and bureaucratized censorship is spreading across the West. The aristocrats of the EU clearly do not want the little people engaging in speech and debate for which they are not "qualified." This tendency has of course taken root int he US. I predict that the next move for the censors will be to slowly substitute the term "constructive speech" for "free speech." Free speech is just that, free and available to anyone. "Constructive Speech" will be defined as speech determined and approved as such by specialists - the usual gaggle of bureaucrats, academics and media "experts." Those seeking to strangle free speech are slowly and incrementally working their way toward "constructive speech" and the censor's diktat. This decision in Brussels is a long step toward this awful future.
Ayatollah Khomeini provided clarification on the broader issue just a few decades ago (The Little Green Book, fatwa #41409):
"A man can have sexual pleasure from a child as young as a baby. However, he should not penetrate vaginally, but sodomising the child is acceptable. If a man does penetrate and damage the child then, he should be responsible for her subsistence all her life. This girl will not count as one of his four permanent wives and the man will not be eligible to marry the girl's sister... It is better for a girl to marry at such a time when she would begin menstruation at her husband's house, rather than her father's home. Any father marrying his daughter so young will have a permanent place in heaven".
Haven't had time to reread, but I stand corrected if the correct term is "Blue Book".
https://www.steynonline.com/1516/the-shagged-sheep
Do you think judgments like this are handed down by Judges who themselves wish to have sex with any child or woman whenever they want? Notice all these Islamic sexual laws allow men to do whatever they wish to whomever they wish whenever they wish. It never goes the other way, does it? I would really like to know about the personal life of this Judge. How can one person make a law that has such a negative global impact on other people and be able to skew logic, responsibility and morality so profoundly?
It's all about European "harmonisation". Literally. And normalising culturally-inspired child sexual abuse.
#DiversityIsOurStrength.
Hurried cut-n-paste job on the fly with the initial comment on the Ayatollah's injunctions re lawful child sexual abuse (with added reference to Arab/ Sunni fatwa— though it too relates to lawful child molestation).
I humbly defer to the expert on Islamic jurisprudence, as per the aforementioned ovine link.
It was this sort of thing that led Trump voters to instinctively realize something bad was happening that is fundamentally transforming America and western civilization for the worse. In the end Trump may not stem the tide, but at least he has his Presidential foot on the brakes.
Judges, pray tell, who's threatening "religious peace in Austrian society"? Not Mrs. E S. She didn't burst into a Graz mosque shouting "All Muslims must die", and then commence carrying out the order. She made a defensible, if debatable, point. The answer to which, in an occasionally free society (Austria having been subject to various Emperors and even a fĂĽhrer), is "'shut up,' they explained." We free-speech absolutists declare that the answer to offensive speech is more speech. Muslim free-speech dissenters have been told in no uncertain terms that the answer to offensive speech is more violence, or at least the threat of it. If we understand that, you bet they do.
From the judicial ruling: "Paedophilia is factually incorrect, since paedophilia is a sexual preference which solely or mainly is directed towards children."
"Pais" is the Classical Greek for "child", so paedophilia is absolutely, by definition, "directed towards children." There is no "mainly" about it. Furthermore, paedophile is, itself, a euphemism for paederast.
As for the observation that child marriages were common among European ruling dynasties - so what? Yes, Margaret Beaufort was pregnant at twelve, I think, bearing the future Henry VII, and never capable of having another child. Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, was betrothed to François, then only the son of the heir to the French throne, when she was a very small child, but she didn't actually marry him for well over a decade. The French rushed the marriage, probably, because François was not expected to survive his father (ironically, he did, although not for long).
The point about both these cases is that, even in their own times, they were seen as extraordinarily young marriages, illegal in most modern societies, but even Margaret Beaufort was several years older than Aisha, when she wed.
It is a depressing essay, and I found myself stuck on the observation that child marriage used to be common among European ruling dynasties. And yet, none of those rulers are today held up as the prophet of a religion that declares global domination to be its aim.
" it's not technically possible to "slander" a bloke who's been six foot under for 1,400 years"
Nor is it possible to slander a bloke who never existed, which is what the scholars now believe about Mo.
Mecca did not exist in the 7th century, the Quraysh tribe never existed, the battle of Khaybar never happened...
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mecca-Mystery-Probing-Muslim-History-ebook/dp/B07DJ69R6F?SubscriptionId=AKIAILSHYYTFIVPWUY6Q&tag=duc08-21&linkCode=xm2&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B07DJ69R6F
Gareth,
That is one amazing book! I can't believe it sat around on my bookshelf for a year before I read it. Better late than never, I suppose.
Another is Emmett Scott's book "A Guide to the Phantom Dark Age". According to Scott, not only is the life of Mohammad totally fake, the Muslim Higrah calendar was padded with 200 years of fake Islamic history.
In response, the Western Christians did nearly the same thing by creating the Anno Domini calendar and padding it with 300 years of fake European history (Charlemagne, etc) starting the calendar at 1045 AD when it should have been 745 AD.
Whether you believe the phantom history thesis or not, those early Medieval European propagandists were worthy of much more respect than the current batch.
The self-appointed political elite used to yap about self-determination. Now we have self-eunuchization instead.
The irony is that some scholars (eg: Scott and Townsend) find no objective evidence that Muhammad even existed, nor that the first two hundred years of Islamic history were anything other than a complete fabrication for political propaganda purposes. Slandering Mohammad is like slandering Santa Claus, except that the objective evidence supporting the existence of a historical St Nicholas is much more credible.
It is a shame that the European Human Rights Court has fallen for this ancient lie as easily and as thoroughly as fuddled fellahin.
"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but in the same way and to the same extent that we respect his opinion that his wife is beautiful and his children smart."
- H. L. Mencken
Where is the Sage of Baltimore when we need him? Shadow banned from Twitter, no doubt.
May I humbly suggest that readers who haven't already acquainted themselves with Katie Hopkins.(See Hopkin's World, etc.) do so. She gives an excellent perspective to Mark's remarks from a very pro-American, U.K. conservative citizen viewpoint. She is the very personification of free speech on this and other subjects. I certainly would love to see her on Mark's next cruise.
That phrase "carefully balanced" is exquisitely weaselly. It's meant to mean "The European Court of Human Rights only arrived at this decision after deep thought and extensive debate." As if grownups are supposed to believe that. But I sometimes wonder if bodies like the ECHR say stuff like this because they believe it, or if they're just showing their contempt for the commoners.
Great essay and now I'm more depressed than ever before. The legal minds behind these court decisions need to take a walk off a short plank. The next crew of cartoonists who want to express themselves about these antiquated people offering twisted rationale supporting antiquated customs will be the next group to get murdered in cold blood if the twisted minds don't stop twisting like pretzels to defend the indefensible. Blood will be on their hands. That's how this works: Do the bidding of the extremists and make everyone bow down to big Mo! Problems solved and we'll all be wearing mailbox garments by 2050.