Norway ends blasphemy law after Hebdo attack

[tay]

http://www.thelocal.no/page/view/tag/Norway has scrapped its longstanding blasphemy law, meaning it is now legal to mock the beliefs of others, in a direct response to January’s brutal attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

The proposal to rush through the change was made in February by Conservative MP Anders B. Werp and Progress Party MP Jan Arild Ellingsen, who argued that the law “underpins a perception that religious expressions and symbols are entitled to a special protection”.

“This is very unfortunate signal to send, and it is time that society clearly stands up for freedom of speech,” the two wrote in their proposal.

Norway’s parliament first voted to scrap the blasphemy law back in 2009, against strong opposition from the Christian Democrat party. But the move has yet to come into force because the country’s new penal code remains delayed by problems updating the computer systems used by police and prosecutors.

The decision to push through the change was attacked as “cultural suicide” by Finn Jarle Sæle, editor of the Norwegian Christian weekly, Norge IDAG.

But the change will be largely symbolic.

The last time anyone was tried for blasphemy in Norway was back in 1933, when the writer Arnulf Overland was prosecuted for giving a lecture titled "Christianity, the tenth plague" to the Norwegian Students' Society. He was acquitted.


The last time anyone was actually convicted was in 1912, when the journalist Arnfred Olsen was taken to court for an article criticising Christianity in the radical magazine Freethinkers.





http://www.thelocal.no/20150507/norway-scraps-blasphemy-law-after-hebdo-attacks

 

[Tecumsehsbones]

Good. It totally sucks that there's no fast, efficient way to shut up the perpetual malcontents who choose to express their mental illness through racial, religious, or other group hate, but the only way to put it to bed is to get it out and expose it for what it is: the pathetic attempts of damaged and inadequate people to make themselves feel important. Or even significant.

 

[Glacier]

For the past 2 generations the blasphemy laws were for nothing more than the old laws on the books that say you must have a hitching post outside your business. Totally benign and completely ignored. However, with the rise of Islam in Europe they are no longer benign so they must be abolished along with all hate speech laws.

 

[WLDB]

Good. Im surprised it still existed at all over there.

 

[MHz]

The hitching post was the dividing line between a horse 'wandering away' and a 'dead horse-thief'.

Nice to see the EU can find a silver lining to the whole slimy affair.

Good. It totally sucks that there's no fast, efficient way to shut up the perpetual malcontents who choose to express their mental illness through racial, religious, or other group hate, but the only way to put it to bed is to get it out and expose it for what it is: the pathetic attempts of damaged and inadequate people to make themselves feel important. Or even significant.

Should I be at all concerned that I don't have to re-read your posts to have it sink in that somebody can even come up with something along that line and not suffer the Snowden Syndrome. You planning to go homesteading in Eastern Russia too? Hint, start beside the rail line.