Blasphemy in Europe news

by Monitor
MediaWatchWatch.org.uk
June 1, 2009

https://www.legal-project.org/358/blasphemy-in-europe-news

Excerpt:

Three pieces of blasphemy news from Europe today, and they are all good.

Firstly, the Council of Europe's Venice Commission, the body's constitutional law experts, advised that "blasphemy" should not be a criminal offence. They affirmed that blasphemy is part of a person's freedom of expression, and was thus protected speech. "Incitement to religious hatred" on the other hand, should be illegal.

Secondly, the Norwegian parliament voted overwhelmingly to remove the "blasphemy paragraph" from a raft of new legislation. It was replaced with an additional paragraph on racism. Only the Christian People's Party wanted blasphemy to be formally criminalised, as a "symbolic law."

Finally, the counter-intuitively good news from the Netherlands is that the cabinet has dropped plans to scrap the current blasphemy law. Why is this good news? Because, as we reported back in November 2008, the blasphemy law was set to be replaced by something much worse.

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