The opening of 2019 marks two dark events in the recent history of free speech: the fourth anniversary of the attack against the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and the 30th anniversary of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s fatwa calling for the killing of the British-Indian author Salman Rushdie.
Both of these events were immediately recognized as attacks against foundational European values. Neither event, however, occasioned any concerted defense of the values in question. Instead, Europe’s highest institutions are now as likely to affirm laws against blasphemy and religious offense as they are to overturn them.
.... But despite the unanimous rhetorical support for free speech after Charlie Hebdo, blasphemy bans have become more firmly anchored in some parts of the continent in recent years. In a recent case, the European Court of Human Rights even reaffirmed that European human rights law recognizes a right not to have one’s religious feelings hurt.
The court based its decision on the deeply flawed assumption that religious peace and tolerance may require the policing rather than the protection of “gratuitously offensive” speech. Accordingly, it found that Austria had not violated freedom of expression by convicting a woman for having called the Prophet Mohammed a “pedophile.” [Foreign Policy] Read more
