Truth is no Legal Defense in Racism Persecution Trials

Proving the truthfulness of a racist statement is often not a valid defense in court against racism charges.

Example:

1) Canada Supreme Court: Truth is no defense

Another key detail is that truth is no defense: it is impermissible even to state demonstrable facts if, in the authorities' estimation, those facts might spark enmity toward a group.

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2) Swedish court: truth has no bearing in this case

"The Court [Tingsrätten] notes that the question of whether or not Michael Hess's pronouncement is true, or appeared to be true to Michael Hess, has no bearing on the case. Michael Hess's statement must be judged based on its timing and context. ...

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3) prohibition of most voted Flemish Party Vlaams Blok

Vlaams Blok, the party with the most votes in the Flemish part (Vlaams) of Belgium was outlawed for citing crime statistics about foreign nationals in Belgian prisons. [[&&needs proof]]

Nov 20, 2015 ... This was the case in Belgium, where in 2004 a court ruling shut down the Vlaams Blok, a party that had won 24% of the popular vote for the Flemish parliament ... [https://www.unz.com/pfrost/2015/]

4) Vienna conviction for Islamophobia

For quoting "Every Muslim is a potential terrorist", for saying "The Koran is more dangerous than Hitler's 'Mein Kampf'", and "Islam is an ideology that legitimizes killing" [German 1, 2]

Wenn ein Moslem seine Glaubenswerte ernst nimmt und ein Moslem zurückkehrt zu dem, was Mohammed gesagt hat und was im Koran steht, ist er, wenn er ein vorbildlicher Moslem ist, morgen in erster Linie dabei, ein Krieger Gottes zu sein, weil das einfach ein Teil des Glaubens ist. (..)

Michael Stürzenberger: Silenced in Graz | Gates of Vienna

The 51-year-old appeared at the PEGIDA demonstration in Graz’s Freedom Square on Palm Sunday. State’s Attorney Johannes Winklhofer accused him of having said literally: “Every Muslim is a potential terrorist.” Further , according to the complaint, he called the Koran “the worst book in the world.”

“I am innocent, because I only state facts”

Stürzenberger, who is also he head of the minor party Die Freiheit, defended himself against the charges: “I am innocent because I am only passing on facts.”

He emphasized that his goal was an intensive explanation of Islam. “We have nothing against Muslims as people.

Note: Having a general grudge against Muslim people would be a serious crime.

The Truth Cannot Be Racist

Another way to see things, a bit similar to our #TheTruthIsRacist is that The Truth Cannot Be Racist. But these people refer only to truth about grooming gangs not being racist, not about IQ research, general crime statistics, etc. Their solution is not a sweeping as our #TheTruthIsRapist.

In 2017, the English Defence League, which some disparage as racist -- to which the EDL responds, "The truth cannot be racist" -- published online a list of "Muslim grooming gangs and other rape jihad convictions". It provides a long, alphabetical list of "170 known completed trials with convictions for rape jihad offences at 68 main locations". The list may be of intrinsic interest, in that it provides links to news reports about these trials, but it is in reality, highly misleading.[1] First of all, there is no evidence that any of the men involved (most often one or two) had the least notion of conducting "rape jihad", a concept seemingly made up by the EDL. [Source:The Truth Cannot Be Racist]

European Court of Human Rights Blasphemy Laws: Where a Word out of Place Can Cost Your Life]

When I lived in the Irish Republic in the 1960s and early 1970s, the Catholic Church held a tight grip on society. Books were banned, including by James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence and all of Sigmund Freud. Films and plays were also banned or censored. The intolerant ban on Catholics studying at Trinity College Dublin perpetuated injustice. Since the 1960s, however, we now have same-sex marriage, women's right to abortion, and an openly gay Taoiseach (Prime Minister). This year, on October 6, a majority of the Irish voted in a referendum to abolish the blasphemy law that had been in its constitution since 1937. The country has liberalized remarkably.

Ironically, while Ireland's 2010 blasphemy law was still technically on the books (although never actually implemented ), the 57-state Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) – consisting of 56 mostly Muslim states plus "Palestine" -- cited it in 2009 during an attempt to impose an international blasphemy law on the UN. Also in 2009, the government had passed a new Irish Defamation Act that contained a full definition of the blasphemy law (the one abolished this year). This vote took place during a committee meeting for the 13th session of the UN Human Rights Council.[...]

With these background facts, it is important to look at what happened on October 25 this year when the European Court of Human Rights issued its verdict on a case involving an Austrian woman, called Mrs. S., presumably Elisabeth Sabadtisch-Wolff, and an appeal she had made to the court to protect her right to free speech over a sensitive but factually correct issue concerning the Prophet Muhammad.
There is no room here for a full account of the woman in question, but readers may consult the details by the Soeren Kern here and here. What it amounts to is that Mrs. Sabaditsch-Wolff had given seminars about Islam in which she had drawn attention to the well-attested fact that Muhammad had married one of his eleven official wives, A'isha, when she was six, and consummated the marriage when she was nine. He apparently continued to have sexual relations with her until his death in 632, when she would have been eighteen.
Sabaditsch-Wolff was reported to the authorities for claiming that Muhammad "liked to do it with children. A 56-year-old and a 6-year-old? . . . What do we call it, if it is not pedophilia?". She was arrested and tried in 2009 through 2011, sentenced for "denigration of religious beliefs of a legally recognized religion", fined €480 ($625) and threatened with three months in prison. She appealed to Vienna's Provincial Appellate Court, which turned her down. Finally, she took her appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. That court, which reported on October 25, 2018, ruled that criticism of Muhammad constitutes incitement to hatred -- meaning that in Europe, criticizing Muhammad is no longer protected free speech. In their judgement, the judges wrote that defamation of Muhammad "goes beyond the permissible limits of an objective debate" and "could stir up prejudice and put at risk religious peace."
The judgement will have an ongoing negative impact not only on Sabaditsch-Wolff, who will carry a criminal record for the rest of her life, with the resulting serious effects on her career and other matters, but all of the West, as well. It has certainly banned her and others from exercising their right to free speech asserted in the Convention of the Council of Europe.
Now, it could well be argued, as the ECHR did, that Sabaditsch-Wolff expressed her concerns about Muhammad's sexuality without due attention to the historical and cultural context within which his marriage to A'isha took place. The ECHR did indeed argue this. The ECHR cited the Judgement of the Austrian courts:
"The national courts found that Mrs S. had subjectively labelled Muhammad with pedophilia as his general sexual preference, and that she failed to neutrally inform her audience of the historical background, which consequently did not allow for a serious debate on that issue."
What the court has actually done, however, is rule out the possibility of any debate in which a range of various experts and members of the public could take part, to exchange views on a clearly controversial and unresolved subject. Now, it seems, the only views that will be respected in the public forum are those of devout Muslims.[Source: European Court of Human Rights Blasphemy Laws: Where a Word out of Place Can Cost Your Life]

India: Ex-Police Chief prosecuted for noting that rising Muslim birthrate would alter state’s demographics

What TP Senkumar said was factually correct:

Now, factually speaking, the first statement seems logically correct. If 27 per cent of the population is producing 42 per cent of the babies, then sooner or later that group will grow, and demography will change in its favour, especially in a democracy. There is precedent: take the Arab nation of Lebanon. In their last census in 1932, the ratio of Christians to Muslims was 51:49; with higher Muslim fertility and Christian emigration, the 2014 ratio was roughly 40:60. Yes, demographics can change in a few decades. Demography is history.
The second statement that the alleged “love jihad” exists in Kerala merely repeats an official response tabled in the Kerala Assembly in September 2012 by the then chief minister Oommen Chandy that in 2009-2012, 2,667 women converted to Islam (of which 2,195 were Hindus and 492 were Christians), 79 women to Christianity and two to Hinduism.

But it seems as if the whole world over, the truth is no defense: if you utter a word even remotely critical of Islam or Muslims, you will be liable to vilification, ostracism, and in some cases even criminal prosecution. Has the whole world adopted Sharia blasphemy laws?

“Former Kerala Police Chief TP Senkumar Booked Over Communal Comments,” by Neethu Reghukumar, News18, July 15, 2017 (thanks to Kerala):

Thiruvananthapuram: Former Kerala Police chief TP Senkumar was booked under non-bailable section of the IPC on Friday for allegedly spreading religious hatred through comments made during an interview to a magazine.

In the interview to Samakaalika Malayalam, Senkumar had said that the “rising” birthrate among Muslims in Kerala would alter the state’s demographics and had questioned the rising cases of “love jihad”.

Robert Spencer: The West Adopts Sharia Blasphemy Laws

My latest over at the Geller Report:

Pakistan’s The Nation reported Saturday that a Christian has been arrested for criticizing Muhammad. That is the sort of thing that happens frequently in a state that enforces Sharia blasphemy laws, but in Europe and North America, we are more enlightened. We value the freedom of speech, and understand that free and unrestricted discourse is an indispensable foundation of a free society. Or at least we used to. A few recent news items show how far Islamic blasphemy laws have advanced in the West.

In Britain last week, a hamburger vendor named Jim Gardiner refused to serve a customer, Piers Palmer, after Palmer disagreed with Gardiner’s Islamocritical views. That was a bit rude, but then Palmer reported Gardiner to the police for “hate speech.” Gardiner went to court, and was fined.

It’s police state behavior to turn in someone to authorities for ideological deviance, perhaps hoping to curry favor by doing so. Piers Palmer will soon be living in the Britain he has chosen and that he wants, and by then he may regret the course of action he has taken, but at that point it will be far too late.

The Belfast Telegraph reported several weeks ago that “three men have been arrested in relation to suspected hate crime in Armagh and Coalisland. Police conducted searches and arrested three men age 31, 38 and 47. They have been arrested as a result of an investigation following reports of anti-Islamic material being displayed in the Armagh area….”

The Belfast Telegraph, sensitive to Islamic sensibilities, does not tell us what this “hate crime” consisted of. If it involved direct incitement to violence, then these men should have been arrested for incitement to violence. But if it consisted solely of criticism of Islam, then the question becomes, would they have been arrested for anti-Christian material? Anti-Jewish material? Or is it a “hate crime” only to criticize Islam in Northern Ireland? If so, when did the U.K. become a Sharia state?

These cases show that the freedom of speech is dead in Britain. It is illegal to hold critical views of Islam or Muslims. If Jim Gardiner or these three Northern Irish had criticized Christianity and Christians, they never would have run afoul of the law.

In France, meanwhile, journalist Éric Zemmour has been charged with “incitement to discrimination and hatred against people of Muslim faith” for the crime of saying that Muslims “have to choose between Islam and France,” and that “Jihad is a religious duty,” and that “Muslims consider jihadists as good Muslims,” and that “moderate Islam does not exist.” These statements are all demonstrably true, but truth appears to be no defense in Sharia France. Zemmour, like Gardiner, would not be facing any charges if he had criticized Christianity or any religion other than Islam.

And in Canada, the American political activist known as “Wild Bill,” Bill Finlay, was invited to speak in Calgary about the impact of Sharia on women and children, and about the freedom of speech. But he never got there: Canadian authorities stopped him at the border and confiscated his iPad, accusing him of attempting to smuggle “hate speech” into Canada.

Can it happen here? Of course. In New Jersey in late June, Prospect Park Mayor Mohamed Khairullah grew enraged during a contentious Prospect Park Board of Education meeting when board member Emma Anderson stated: “This is not Sharia law, this is an orderly session.” Khairullah called for her resignation, as did the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). So far Anderson has not obliged, but clearly Khairullah and CAIR are trying to set a precedent: even the most offhanded remark, if it is even remotely critical of Islam, is cause for firing and ostracism.

They’re well on their way to success already. All over the West, non-Muslim authorities are willingly adopting Sharia blasphemy norms. Where will it end? Will the West passively acquiesce to the full implementation of Sharia, or will at some point authorities draw the line and say Thus far, and no farther? If they ever intend to do that, they should do it quickly, for as these cases indicate, the freedom of speech is eroding rapidly. No one seems particularly concerned about that now, but they may find that they miss it when it’s gone.

End of summary

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1 Supreme Court upholds Canada's hate speech laws in case involving anti-gay crusader

But it upheld the controversial legal concept of speech that is “likely to expose” certain groups to hatred.

It seems that citing true statistics that certain groups commit lots of crime, rape, robbery, theft would likely expose them to hate.

The Saskatchewan law, which is similar to others in Alberta, B.C., the Northwest Territories and federally, “appropriately balances the fundamental values underlying freedom of expression with competing Charter rights and other values essential to a free and democratic society, in this case a commitment to equality and respect for group identity and the inherent dignity owed to all human beings,” wrote Mr. Justice Marshall Rothstein for the court.

“Framing speech as arising in a moral context or within a public policy debate does not cleanse it of its harmful effect,” the judges decided.

Again, it seems quite clear that citing correct crime statistics or citing research about low African IQ in a public policy debate would be criminal. Even if it is for the best of intents.

The judges reinstated Mr. Whatcott’s conviction by a hate speech tribunal in the case of two anti-gay fliers he distributed, but overturned it in the case of two others.

2
Sweden: Rape Capital of the West cites:

Also see:

Swedish Judge On Criticism Of Muslim Rape Wave: “Whether Or Not A Pronouncement Is True ‘Has No Bearing On The Case.'” Everything is wonderful here, the Muslim immigrant population is assimilating, and they're not raping anybody. The only news I have to report is that an opposition politician was fined and threatened with prison for saying differently. P. S. Send pepper spray! {Note: this is meant as irony}

Under Sharia Speech Law that Europe Has and Obama Wants, Truth Is No Defense

Roger Kimball highlights a Gatestone Institute report by the editors of Dispatch International about the explosion of rape in Sweden. As the country’s make-up has dramatically changed due to mass immigration, particularly from Muslim countries in the Middle East and northern and eastern Africa, the number of rapes reported to police has increased by an astonishing 1,472 percent — from 421 in 1975 to 6,620 last year.

Roger observes:

Note that conspicuous by its absence is any mention of who it is who is committing the rapes. Gatestone quotes Michael Hess, a local politician from the Sweden Democrat Party: “When will you journalists realize that it is deeply rooted in Islam’s culture to rape and brutalize women who refuse to comply with Islamic teachings. There is a strong connection between rapes in Sweden and the number of immigrants from MENA-countries [Middle East and North Africa].”
For that bit of plain speaking, Hess was handed a fine and a suspended jail sentence by a Swedish court. Was what he said untrue? Truth was not something the court cared about: “The Court [Tingsrätten] notes that the question of whether or not Michael Hess’s pronouncement is true, or appeared to be true to Michael Hess, has no bearing on the case. Michael Hess’s statement must be judged based on its timing and context.”

Now, as I’ve related here a number of times, President Obama, with energetic assistance from Hillary Clinton, has been trying to saddle the United States with sharia blasphemy standards since taking office in 2009.

Read more at: .nationalreview

The EU's Dangerous New Confidence Game

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13262/eu-confidence-game

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At the end of last month, the European Court of Human Rights issued its ruling in a long-running case involving an Austrian woman named Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff. Way back in 2009, in Vienna, Sabaditsch-Wolff (who has lived in several Muslim countries) gave two seminars entitled, "Basic Information on Islam." During these talks, in the words of the ECHR:

"... she discussed the marriage between the Prophet Muhammad and a six-year old girl, Aisha, which allegedly was consummated when she was nine. Inter alia, the applicant stated that Muhammad 'liked to do it with children' and '... A 56-year-old and a six-year-old? ... What do we call it, if it is not paedophilia?'"

For this statement, based on the text of an official Hadith [the acts and saying if Muhammad], Sahih-Bukhari, Vol. 5, Book 58, Nos. 234–236, the Vienna Regional Criminal Court, in February 2011, found Sabaditsch-Wolff guilty of "disparaging religious doctrines." She was fined 480 euros and ordered to pay costs. During an appeal the following December, the court upheld the decision. In December 2013, Austria's Supreme Court dismissed a request for the proceedings to be renewed. [Source: gatestoneinstitute]

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The first problem of the European Court of Human Rights decision against Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff is that it means that, at least in cases of blasphemy, truth is not a defence.
Such a judgement hands over the decision on what is or is not allowed to be said not to a European or national court, but to whoever can claim, plausibly or otherwise, that another individual has risked "the peace." […]

The first problem brought by the ECHR decision to uphold the Austrian court's verdict against Sabaditsch-Wolff is that it means that, at least in cases of blasphemy, truth is not a defence. There is -- as every Islamic scholar knows -- significant evidence from the Hadith to allow someone to make a perfectly plausible case along the lines that Sabaditsch-Wolff did. But the courts went further. They claimed that her statements were based on "untrue facts" -- whatever those might be. As I have pointed out elsewhere, this poses a serious problem for Europeans. It tells us that words we can read with our own eyes, and which are in books freely available anywhere in the world, do not say the words that they say. What are we to do? Lie? Apparently so.

The second problem is that it turns it a debate about facts into a debate about "tone." Were certain things said in an "objective" manner or not? So, in the future, one European might state something in one tone of voice and another might state it in another -- and on that, a prosecution could be launched. While the first defendant can expect to be hauled before the court, the second may be allowed to continue to roam intellectually and physically free. Who is to decide that?

The third problem is, of course, that such a judgement hands over the decision on what is or is not allowed to be said not to a European or national court, but to whoever can claim, plausibly or otherwise, that another individual has risked "the peace."

Which returns us to the example of the 95,000 descendants of Mohammed. There have been similar mobster tricks tried for some years now. They all run on the old claim, "I'm not mad with you myself; I'm just holding my friend back here." In the Austrian case, as in the Danish one, it seems to have a disturbing ability to work. Yet in the universe of confidence games, this must be among the baldest and the worst.

Once one group of people sees that game working, why shouldn't everyone else play it too? Why shouldn't any other group in Austria other than Muslims claim, on a routine basis, that their feelings have been hurt and announce to the courts that, as a result, "peace" has been put at risk? If I were an Austrian Christian of a fundamentalist bent, I might well think about attending various lectures and sermons at a range of Austrian mosques, waiting until one of the speakers denies the divinity and resurrection of Christ and then run straight to the courts. After all, a denial of the resurrection of Christ by a Muslim could be deemed to be seriously offensive to a Christian and who is to say that "peace" will not be at risk as a result? [Source: gatestoneinstitute]

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