Great. Now they need to get rid of these so-called ‘hate-speech’ laws that were used to drag Geert Wilders through the courts.
Free speech victory: Dutch parliament revokes blasphemy law
While other Western nations flirt with introducing blasphemy laws under the guise of “hate speech” codes, the Netherlands, of all places, affirms free speech. “Dutch Parliament Revokes Blasphemy Law,” by Frud Bezhan for RFE/RL, November 29/JW:
Insulting God will no longer be a crime in the Netherlands after the Dutch parliament decided to revoke a decades-old blasphemy law from the statute books.The law, which was drafted in the 1930s, had not been used for half a century, leading legislators to decide there was no longer a need for it.Discussions over whether to formally abolish blasphemy restrictions in the Netherlands began a decade ago as part of a debate about the limits of freedom of expression.
But Marc Veldt, a media-law lecturer at the University of Applied Sciences in Utrecht, says the November 29 decision was made possible by national elections in September, in which two liberal parties emerged victorious. Far-right and conservative parties, which had opposed lifting the blasphemy ban, took heavy losses in the poll.
Veldt says the move to lift the ban on blasphemy was also an indirect result of the legal case involving anti-Islam Dutch politician Geert Wilders. In June 2011, a Dutch court ruled that Wilders had the right to criticize Islam, even though his opinions insulted many Muslims.
Wilders, who leads the Freedom Party, had described Islam as “fascist” and compared Islam’s holy book, the Koran, to Adolf Hitler’s autobiography and political manifesto “Mein Kampf.” Amsterdam judge Marcel van Oosten said Wilders’ statements were directed at Islam and not at Muslims. Van Oosten said the statements were “gross and denigrating” but still “acceptable within the context of public debate.”
Wilders said at the time that the verdict was “not only an acquittal for me, but a victory for freedom of expression in the Netherlands.”
The decision to abolish the country’s blasphemy law has been hailed by activists internationally, who have long called it outdated and a threat to free speech.
Push Back Against Blasphemy Laws
One of them is Padraig Reidy, a news editor at “Index on Censorship,” a magazine based in London that is devoted to protecting freedom of expression.
Reidy says many European states still have laws prohibiting blasphemy, although in many cases such legislation has not been invoked for decades. Different European countries have taken their own trajectories on the issue in recent years, making it hard to discern a clear trend.
Britain, for example, scrapped a blasphemy law in 2008, which had made it illegal to insult Christianity. But it has since replaced it with a more general law against incitement to religious hatred.
Ireland introduced a new law in 2010 that makes blasphemy a crime punishable by a fine of up to 25,000 euros ($32,485). The Irish law defines blasphemy as “publishing or uttering matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters sacred by any religion thereby intentionally causing outrage among a substantial number of adherents of that religion, with some defenses permitted.”
Reidy argues that blasphemy laws are no longer relevant in the 21st century. He says there is no place for a law defending religion, which he calls an “ideal.” He says it should be people who have rights, not ideals.
“There’s no question that blasphemy laws are a severe restriction on free speech. Any push back against blasphemy laws — [against the notion that ideas] should be protected — is a good thing. It’s very important that blasphemy laws should be repealed,” Reidy says….
Indeed.
Palestinian Media Watch translates a May 6th article from the official 
From Ian: Honest Reporting: Maybe Israel Isn’t Behind the Middle East’ 
From Ian: Latma: Channel 10's amazing scoop [youtube http://www.y 
From BBC: Egyptian police have sealed off the Rafah border crossing wi 
From New York Daily News: Federal authorities Thursday scrambled to fi 
According to a cable sent by the US embassy in Damascus in December 20 
Mustafa Kazemi is an Afghan government official and war correspondent. 
One of the reasons why Israel's conflict with the 'Palestini 
Haaretz's Barak Ravid reports that US Secretary of State John FN 
Shavua tov, a good week to everyone. Moshe Averick destroys Yesh Atid 
US officials told the Wall Street Journal on Thursday to expect more I 
A bipartisan group of Congressional Representatives has urged 'm 
Charles Krauthammer destroys President Hussein Obama on his response t 
Those poor starving Gazans are now able to get Kentucky Fried Chicken
{ 8 comments }
I think God is big enough to take critical comment from us!!!
To you idiot muslims – tell us how useless God would need to be to have you morons defending YOUR interpretation of what God is.
And it is not even YOUR interpretation – most of you mimic the quran like retarded monkeys (and that is an insult to retarded monkeys)!!!!
Well said, kaw.
Well said.
(Tim LaHaye)—”To suggest that the merciful, long suffering, gracious and loving God of the Bible would invent a dreadful doctrine like Calvinism, which would have us believe it is an act of grace to select only certain people for heaven and, by exclusion, others for hell, comes perilously close to blasphemy.”
I find this quote interesting in that it reflects what Catholics were taught 60 years ago…and that is, that only Catholics could go to heaven. This meant that all others would go to hell or perhaps limbo. As a kid I found this doctrine ridiculous…just as I always thought that the Jews set themselves up with their ‘we are the chosen people’.
What parent intentionally chooses their ‘favorite child’ without setting up that kid both for punishment by the others or making the other kids feel like they can never measure up to daddy’s dictates?
So it isn’t just Judaism that makes this incredibly wild claim. It is also what Islam forces on muslims….when muhammed says the infidel should be taken out if they do not submit, you are playing the part of a psychopathic prick who should be hung at dawn facing mecca.
To think that this is even up for discussion in this century is mind boggling. When you look at the history of religion, you see without a doubt, that religions are always big business buoyed up by bellicose boy/men…usually the useless kind who don’t want to have to work, but want to sit there and dictate to others what to do. All the meanwhile leeching off the labor of men who actually DO WORK! And of course, being served by women that they totally take for granted. For this alone, such men should be so ashamed of selves.
These in fact, are the lowest of the low, be it a priest/bishop/cardinal or an imam reporting regularly on youtube on How to Properly Beat your Wife. Fact is, if anyone should be beaten, it should be the imam or the priest/confessor who tells a man in the confessional that if he has stepped out on his wife, to go buy her a new coffee maker. Yep, a priest actually told me that fifty years ago..shows one just how really dumb these guys are, not to mention immoral to the core. Sort of like with the moes…the guys can roam, can frequent sex slave hovels, but IF the little women is out of line, off with her head. Nope, I say, off with HIS head, both the one above his neck and the one below waist.
It is all so laughable when you think about it…but at the same time, super serious, as long as we have morons with midget minds that think that they can enforce their madness on the rest of us. I close with this quote from (Paul Rudnick)–” There is only one blasphemy, and that is the refusal to experience joy.”
It is here where we find islam totally in the dark about joy..when you raise a kid to believe that he must kill the jew and Christian, when you cut off your young girl’s clit, when your man can have a few wives, when you force women to not be healthy by denying sun on their skin, when you as men are lazy and do not want to protect your family, just how in the hell can you have any joy about anything? If there is a religion espousing all things dark, Islam takes first prize.
Came upon this…..John Shelby Spong, retired Episcopal bishop:
“I don’t want a God that would go around killing people’s little girls. Neither do I want a God who would kill his own son.”
“Seldom did Christians pause to recognize the ogre into which they had turned God. A human father who would nail his son to a cross for any purpose would be arrested for child abuse. Yet that continued to be said of God as if it made God more holy and more worthy of worship.”
I would add that muslims, in particular Muhammed’s myth on Allah, turned their god into a terrorist god…a god who would demand little girl’s sexual parts be mutilated, a god who would demand of a mother to tie a suicide belt to her kid and watch him be blown up..a god who hates women. All of this is super sick, and only a people wanting to remain in neanderthal mode could agree to such archaic thinking.
So like Kaw says above, it is only your interpretation of god..NOT the reality of a higher power who just might destroy you for even thinking that you can divine the real nature of the Almighty. Imagine all those popes, cardinals, priests, rabbis and idiot imams some day coming face to face with the one real true god and each of them being told that God viewed them each as no better than the village idiots they were. And furthermore, castigating each one on being so ridiculously in the dark as to the true nature of the one real, true, living, loving god of all.
(Tim LaHaye)—”To suggest that the merciful, long suffering, gracious and loving God of the Bible would invent a dreadful doctrine like Calvinism, which would have us believe it is an act of grace to select only certain people for heaven and, by exclusion, others for hell, comes perilously close to blasphemy.”
I find this quote interesting in that it reflects what Catholics were taught 60 years ago…and that is, that only Catholics could go to heaven. This meant that all others would go to hell or perhaps limbo. As a kid I found this doctrine ridiculous…just as I always thought that the Jews set themselves up with their ‘we are the chosen people’. Not exactly a way to make friends and influence people…am just saying! As a parent, I couldn’t have made any of my kids more upset than to point out I had one favorite…so too, a religion like Judaism or Islam does just that, thus setting themselves onto their own islands of what they view as superiority,which to a thinking person is most laughable.
What parent intentionally chooses their ‘favorite child’ without setting up that kid both for punishment by the other’s or making the other kids feel like they can never measure up to daddy’s dictates?
So it isn’t just Judaism that makes this incredibly wild claim. It is also what Islam forces on muslims….when muhammed says the infidel should be taken out if they do not submit, muhammed is playing the part of a psychopathic prick who should face mecca and be hung.
To think that this is even up for discussion in this century is mind boggling. When you look at the history of religion, you see without a doubt, that religions are always big business buoyed up by bellicose boy/men…usually the useless kind who don’t want to have to work, but want to sit there and dictate to others what to do. All the meanwhile leeching off the labor of men who actually DO WORK!
Men, in the case of Christian or Jewish men, have families and do protect them, meaning they provide for them, thus they must work.
“There is only one blasphemy, and that is the refusal to experience joy.” (Paul Rudnick) Looking at that quote by Rudnick, one sees without a doubt that the lack of joy within Islam is truly the one and only blasphemy, so why don’t muslims fess up to that salient fact?
Blasphemy laws backfire; they end up being used to muzzle the counterjihad.
That said, if someone blasphemes against the Christian faith I am going to complain about it. We can boycott or protest these expressions without the government being involved.
Oh, wait, sometimes the government already IS involved…
Came upon this…..John Shelby Spong, retired Episcopal bishop:
“I don’t want a God that would go around killing people’s little girls. Neither do I want a God who would kill his own son.”
In his favour, John Shelby Spong does acknowledge the existence of God. What he does not like of God, he rejects. But that is not the central question.
The jews are God’s chosen people, not because they say so but because God says so.
However, the true church (that is real Christians, those saved by God’s grace by faith alone) are ‘grafted in to the vine’, that is they and the Jews become one family. This will play out eventually (in God’s perfect timing) when Israel’s Jews finally recognise their Messiah Jesus.
Christians must support the Jews, otherwise they are being hypocritical by not following the scriptures of the God they purport to follow.
The muslims false ‘god’ has no love, no grace, no forgiveness, just terror.
Comments on this entry are closed.