Despite the abolition of outdated laws, a culture of freedom is failing to take hold
Until last month, a Greek citizen could be jailed for up to two years for “publicly and maliciously blaspheming” against God, against the Greek Orthodox church or “any other permitted religion.” In one of its last acts before losing an election, a leftist government quietly dropped this article as part of a revision of the criminal code.
Yet despite this liberalising trend, people who monitor the freedom of religion-related speech in the West, especially Europe, see no reason to be complacent. Whether because of old habits that die hard, or because of new ideas about how to manage diverse societies, threats to the freedom of expression are still palpable and in some ways rising, they say.
In fact, Mr Malik maintains, there is no real contradiction between the formal abolition of blasphemy legislation and the secular world’s ambivalent interpretation of “hate speech” or extremism to encompass meanings that can easily shut down all vigorous religious debate. Blasphemy is not so much being decriminalised as redefined.
It is the court’s reasoning, as much as its conclusion, that liberty advocates find troubling. States could take action to curb religion-related speech “where such expressions go beyond the limits of a critical denial of other people’s religious beliefs and are likely to incite religious intolerance, for example in the event of an improper or even abusive attack on an object of religious veneration,” the ECHR judges found.
However, he adds, “it is getting more risky to criticise religious ideas. Some people have been vilified, arrested or banned from speaking on the grounds that their critique of religion caused offence to faith communities.
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