On the same day last week, Ireland voted to scrap its blasphemy laws and the European Court of Human Rights upheld a verdict against a woman accused of slandering the Prophet Muhammad. And that is the new Europe in a nutshell: severing its link to Christianity at the same time as it struggles to accommodate the more assertive faith of Islam. We’re facing an almighty test of free speech vs religious tolerance.
The ECHR story started in 2009, when an Austrian woman compared one of Muhammad’s marriages to paedophilia at a seminar: she claimed that his bride, Aisha, was six-years-old at her wedding and nine when the union was consummated.
.... Christian conservatives have largely reacted to vilification and marginalisation by withdrawing from politics and society – they have surrendered their once privileged position, as Ireland’s weakly opposed legalisation of gay marriage and blasphemy prove. Paradoxically, at the same time, Europe’s courts risk creating a new status for Islam that could appear to rope it off from criticism, a status that is bound to fuel jealousy and resentment, and won’t be good for anyone in the long-run. [The Telegraph] Read more
