By now most of you would have heard of a recent ruling in Europe which basically informs us that sharia blasphemy laws are now in effect, and one has no right to say anything that will make a Muslim feel bad. Yes it really is that serious. The courts there are pushing sharia law on the rest of Europe.
But let me look at blasphemy laws for just a moment. Many religions have them, because it is felt that such a thing as blasphemy exists. Jesus for example was accused of blasphemy by the Jewish leaders of the day for making himself equal with God (Mark 14:60-64, eg.).
Christian Europe used to have them. Indeed, I was interested to read a piece concerning Ireland just the other day. It said this: “Campaigners in Ireland celebrated the end of a ‘medieval’ ban on blasphemy on Saturday, after voters overwhelmingly backed removing the offence from the constitution in a referendum. . . . It has been over 150 years since anyone was prosecuted for blasphemy in Ireland.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/27/ireland-votes-to-oust-blasphemy-ban-from-constitution
So I return to the case which has been making news for the past week. The case goes back almost a decade. In December of 2011 an Austrian court charged housewife Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff with denigrating religious beliefs, and ordered her to pay a fine for saying that Muhammad’s marriage to a child was akin to paedophilia.
She had made those claims in seminars several years earlier in Vienna. Details of that court case can be found here: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/2702/sabaditsch-wolff-appeal
She had appealed that ruling, but she did not get good news from the powers that be. The European Court of Human Rights just recently decided that her free speech is not protected because she was disparaging a religion and offending Muslims. You can read the ruling for yourself if you are interested: https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng-press#{%22itemid%22:[%22003-6234980-8105265%22]}
Sabaditsch-Wolff said this about the latest outcome:
On Thursday, 25 October the ECHR ruled that my conviction by an Austrian court for discussing the marriage between Prophet Mohammed and a six year old girl, Aisha, did not infringe my rights of freedom of speech.
I was not extended the courtesy of being told of this ruling. Like many others, I had to read it in the media.The ECHR found there had been no violation of Article 10 (freedom of expression) of the European Convention on Human Rights and that right to expression needed to be balanced with the rights of others to have their religious feelings protected, and served the legitimate aim of preserving religious peace in Austria.
In other words, my right to speak freely is less important than protecting the religious feelings of others. This should ring warning bells for my fellow citizens across the continent. We should all be extremely concerned that the rights of Muslims in Europe NOT to be offended are greater than my own rights, as a native European Christian woman, to speak freely. I am proud to be the woman who has raised this alarm….
It is obvious to me that public education and discourse on the subject of Islam can have a fundamental and far-reaching impact, even if our state or supra-national authorities try to stifle or silence it, in order to appease a culture so foreign to our own. This fight continues. My voice will not and cannot be silenced.
https://www.jihadwatch.org/2018/10/elisabeth-sabaditsch-wolff-responds-to-eu-courts-ruling-that-speech-insulting-muhammad-is-prohibited
Yes we are now living in frightening times. The simple truth is this: Judaism and Christianity are routinely disparaged, mocked, vilified and attacked in secular Europe today, and no one bats an eyelid about it. But dare to say anything about Islam – even if it happens to be 100 per cent true – and you will find yourself facing the heavy hand of the law.
I realise that the sexual revolution has pretty much swept everything before its path, but most folks hopefully still think that adults having sex with children is just not on. But it seems fine for the founder of Islam, and no one in Europe is now able to say otherwise.
Thomas Panis offers a good summary of this appalling outcome:
What this shameful episode shows is that the legal elites of the faltering European Union have a complete different idea about liberty, as compared to the ideas of the Founding Fathers in the USA. In pursuit of a European “Bill of Rights,” large treaties were signed, great speeches held, and supranational institutions created. But when push comes to shove, freedom of speech, one of the basic liberties – maybe the most fundamental one of them all – is deemed less important than the feelings of Muslims. Moreover, ironically, critique of the “Religion of Peace” is now deemed a threat to “religious peace.”
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/10/in_europe_feelings_of_muslims_now_officially_trump_freedom_of_speech.html
Was Muhammad a paedophile?
It is worth looking at this issue just a bit more. Did he do that which was akin to paedophilia? Well, what do you call a 50-year-old man who marries a six-year-old girl and consummates that marriage with her when she is nine years old? This is just what Muhammad did with Aisha when he was in Medina. How do we know this? Just pull out your copy of the hadith for starters.
The best known and most reliable, Bukhari [5158] will do here: “Narrated ‘Urwa: The Prophet wrote the (marriage contract) with `Aisha while she was six years old and consummated his marriage with her while she was nine years old and she remained with him for nine years (i.e. till his death).” See here for example: http://www.gowister.com/hadith/bukhari/5046/
However the ECHR is now telling us that none of this matters. Europeans can NOT make such claims any longer as it will hurt the feelings of Muslims and disrupt religious peace. So what we have here is Europe joining enlightened and progressive nations like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia in enforcing sharia blasphemy laws.
Robert Spence asked – and answered – a rhetorical question on all this: “Would the European Court of Human Rights rule that someone deserved a fine and imprisonment for criticizing Jesus? The case wouldn’t even come to them.” Exactly.
https://www.jihadwatch.org/2018/10/european-court-of-human-rights-insulting-muhammad-not-free-speech
Christianity did much to separate church and state – rightly understood. Jesus laid the foundation for this by speaking of rendering to Caesar the things that are his, and to God the things that are his. It took many centuries to see that fully worked out in the West of course, but that is where we got to, with religious freedom and pluralism the result.
But now Europe is throwing all this away. Sure, it still insists on separation of church and state as strongly as ever. But it is now insisting on bringing together mosque and state. Goodbye freedom of speech. Goodbye freedom of conscience. Goodbye freedom of religion.
Welcome to Eurabia, where Islam is sweeping everything in its path while Christianity is being undermined and opposed at every turn. Goodbye Europe.
For those who prefer videos, this 12-minute video by David Wood on the topic is well worth watching and sharing far and wide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ps8iwcxaXV0&fbclid=IwAR0_aIAr_TmW593R0Lay_O2tlN6WMXD-SrLK4lH5qPWpoW-Ckj8HSj2Xtnw
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