ANDREW E. HARROD
March 15, 2013
A
Bruges, Belgium criminal court
convicted a man for shredding a Koran on March 6, 2013. The court
imposed a four-month prison sentence and a 600 euro fine upon him. He
now additionally faces a revocation of a previous suspension of an
18-month prison sentence for having set a fire in a wood. This case
highlights yet again the greater restrictions on speech in free
societies outside of the United States and how these restrictions can
limit open debate about Islam.
The man, identified in print only as Arne S., attended a
demonstration on June 8, 2012, in Ostend, Belgium, before retiring to a
café. There Arne exchanged words with a dozen Muslims and tore apart a
Koran before them. As described in a Belgian press account, Arne's
counsel at trial claimed that the Muslims had thrown the "sacred book"
at Arne, striking him in the head. Arne's lawyer, Olivier Ryde, thus
claimed that no infraction of Belgium's law on hate speech had
occurred. No reports of assault charges against the Muslims have
appeared.
Arne's case demonstrates that Belgium, like many other European
countries, has laws against what is commonly called "hate speech." In
particular, Article 22 of the Belgian Law of May 10, 2007, Aiming to
Struggle Against Certain Forms of Discrimination, prohibits incitement
of hatred, discrimination, violence, and/or segregation against persons
of various protected classes in public settings defined by
Article 444 of the Belgian Penal Code. Article 3 of the May 10, 2007, laws defines these protected classes
based upon age, sexual orientation, civil state, birth, fortune,
religious or philosophical conviction, political conviction, trade union
views, language, actual or future state of health, handicap, physical
or genetic characteristic, or social origin.
Cheradenine Zakalwe of the website
Islam versus Europe
has asked in relation to Arne, "Is Sharia already in force in Europe?"
Yet Arne is not the first individual in Europe convicted of destroying a
"sacred book," nor is the Koran the only book in Europe that qualifies
for this designation.
Poland's supreme court ruled on October 29, 2012 that
a lower court was wrong to exonerate the Polish heavy metal musician
Adam Darski on blasphemy charges for having ripped apart a Bible as a
"book of lies" during a September 2007 concert.
In Darski's case, though, the European Union's (EU) executive body,
the European Commission (EC), came to Darski's defense. An EC statement
on October 31, 2012 expressed the traditional justification for free
speech that "[t]his right protects not only information or ideas that
are favorably received or regarded as inoffensive or as a matter of
indifference, but also those that offend, shock or disturb." It remains
to be seen whether the EC will make the same defense à la Voltaire for
Arne's anti-Islam sentiments.
Controversies about blasphemy aside, Belgium's equation of
"religious" and other "convictions" with physical characteristics such
as a person's place of "birth" is troubling. Such a conception of "hate
speech" encompasses not just the debatable proposition of proscribing
animus expressed against individuals, but also the prohibition of at
least certain forms of opposition to ideas like Islam. In effect, an
individual's identification with an idea like Islam helps shield this
belief from attack in a kind of ideological umbrella.
The cases of Arne, Darski, and others continue to show that criticism
and/or condemnation of Islam can be legally perilous in European
societies traditionally restrictive of free speech out of deference to
group sensibilities and social harmony. Now that Muslim communities
have established themselves in an often politically correct modern
Europe, rejection of Islam is no longer a merely academic matter
involving distant peoples. Precisely the proximity of Islam to Europe,
however, demands unfettered critical evaluation of this faith now more
than ever. Modern expansive notions of "hate speech" and traditional
concepts of blasphemy, now applied not just to Europe's historically
dominant Christian faith but also to an increasingly prominent Islam,
can only hinder this necessary inquiry into Islam.
Andrew
E. Harrod is a freelance researcher and writer who holds a PhD from the
Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and a JD from George Washington
University Law School. He is admitted to the Virginia State Bar. He
has published various pieces concerning an Islamic supremacist agenda at
the Middle East Forum's Legal Project, American Thinker, and Faith
Freedom International.
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