16 November 2010

An Interview with Austrian Free Speech Advocate Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff

.... Gordon: You are the second Austrian who has been charged with hate speech for criticism of the Qur’an and Islam.

Minister of Parliament Dr. Susanne Winter was convicted by a Graz court in January 2009 of hate speech against Islam, received a suspended sentence of three months and was fined the equivalent of $30,000 in Euros. Dutch M.P. Geert Wilders’ trial on similar charges in the Netherlands has been halted because of witness tampering by one of the judges in the Amsterdam tribunal.

Now you, an Austrian housewife and leader of the Act for America Chapter in Austria, are the subject of an unprecedented legal action. My question for you is why is your hate speech trial different from that of M.P. Winter and extremely dangerous?

Sabaditsch-Wolff: My trial is different from the simple point of view that I am a housewife and I am not a member of parliament or a politician. That’s basically all there is to it. I’m a private citizen who is concerned about Islam and the contents of the Qur’an, the Sunnah and Hadith. That is the main difference between Geert Wilders, Susanne Winter and me. [The Iconoclast] Read more