Calling Mohammed a Pedophile Not Covered by Free Speech, European Court Rules

(CNSNews.com) – Europe’s top human rights court has ruled that comments about Mohammed having pedophilic tendencies are not covered by the right to freedom of expression, agreeing with the assessment of courts in Austria that the remarks constituted “an abusive attack on the Prophet of Islam which could stir up prejudice and threaten religious peace.”

A seven-judge European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) panel in Strasbourg concluded that the Austrian courts had “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.”

Thursday’s decision came nine years after Elizabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, an Austrian political scientist and activist, held a seminar in Vienna where among things she criticized the treatment of women in Islam. The topic of Mohammed’s marriage to Aisha, the youngest of his dozen wives and concubines, came up.

According to Islamic texts, the 7th century Arabian who founded Islam was betrothed to Aisha when she was six, and the marriage was consummated when she was nine.

The court record quotes Sabaditsch-Wolff as having said that Mohammed “liked to do it with children,” (other translations of the German comment render it “had a thing for little girls”) and saying, “A 56-year-old and a six-year-old? … What do we call it, if it is not pedophilia?”

In 2011, Sabaditsch-Wolff was convicted under Austria’s penal code for “denigrating the teachings of a legally recognized religion” and fined 480 euros (about $546), plus costs. She was acquitted on a charge of incitement.

Sabaditsch-Wolff appealed the decision, but a higher court in Austria upheld it.

In June 2012 the case was lodged with the ECHR, which hears allegations of breaches of the European Convention on Human Rights. Sabaditsch-Wolff complained her freedom of expression rights under the convention had been violated.

She said the Austrian courts had failed to address the substance of the statements in question, in the light of her right to freedom of expression.

If they had done so, Sabaditsch-Wolff argued, they would have qualified that as value judgments based on facts, rather than as mere value judgments.

They said although people must tolerate the denial by others of their religious beliefs, in cases where comments are “likely to incite religious intolerance” a state might legitimately consider them to be “incompatible with respect for the freedom of thought, conscience and religion and take proportionate restrictive measures.”

The judges also said the subject matter “was of a particularly sensitive nature,” and that the authorities in Austria were “in a better position to evaluate which statements were likely to disturb the religious peace in their country.”

The self-proclaimed Austrian “anti-jihad” and “anti-sharia activist” Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff appeared on June 21, 2013 at the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, DC, at an event co-sponsored by the Center for Security Policy (CSP) and the Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET). In introducing the event, CSP’s Christine Brim called people like Sabaditsch-Wolff the “defenders of freedom” in a “struggle…to preserve free speech” and “equality under the law.” Sabaditsch-Wolff's subsequent presentation of her courageous struggles in no way belied Brim's introduction.

Sabaditsch-Wolff discussed her own well-publicized ordeals and subsequent activism stemming from criticizing Islam, a faith described by her as a “religion of peace” that “is not really peaceful to those who speak the truth.” Daughter of a diplomat, she had already developed reservations about Islam during her childhood stay in Iran right before the 1978-1979 revolution. During her diplomatic tenure, postings to Kuwait encompassing the 1990 Iraq invasion and to Libya where she saw her landlord on September 11, 2001, blame the Jews for Al-Qaeda’s terrorist attacks that day only increased these concerns.

The controversy surrounding Sabaditsch-Wolff began with her comments before an October 2009 Vienna seminar of the rightwing Austrian Freedom Party (Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs or FPÖ). Discussing canonical accounts of Islam’s mid-50s prophet Muhammad consummating a marriage with a nine-year old Aisha, Sabaditsch-Wolff asked “what do you call” this “if not pedophilia?” Subsequently, Sabaditsch-Wolff received hate speech charges under Section 283 of the Austrian Criminal Code.

The trial found insufficient evidence for the Section 283 charge. Yet the judge's initiative brought a Section 188 charge against the denigration of recognized religions, resulting in a 480 Euro fine on February 15, 2011, later upheld. Thus Sabaditsch-Wolff concluded that under Europe’s various speech restrictions “you may not call a spade a spade” with respect to Islam.

This ordeal made Sabaditsch-Wolff devote herself to opposing Islamic totalitarianism, with her main “playground” the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). This 1975-founded non-treaty organization “many people have never heard of” contains 57 states, including the United States and Canada, formulating various legally non-binding agreements in the areas of security, economics, and human rights.

Here Sabaditsch-Wolff focuses on the OSCE’s Human Dimension covering human rights, in particular the Warsaw-based Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR).

Sabaditsch-Wolff described the OSCE as a “significant source” for developing hate speech laws in OSCE countries and the world

More here: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/195601/undaunted-elisabeth-sabaditsch-wolffs-fight-free-andrew-harrod

OH Wow...another NGA (Non Governmental Agency) that Trump needs to get the USA out off.

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