Muslims Demand it and Europe Concedes to Limits on Free Speech

IN EUROPE, the proportion of the population following Islam is fairly large. And as usual, demands for accomodating Muslims are increasingly urgent. Here are some examples of freedoms given away (from an article in Reason magazine):

In January, the World Culture Museum in Gothenburg, Sweden, took down a painting, Scène d'amour, described by its artist, Louzla Darabi, as a "response to Muslim hypocrisy about sexuality, above all women's sexuality"; in October, London's Tate Gallery removed John Latham's God Is Great, a work that incorporated copies of the Bible and the Koran. (Latham accused the gallery of cowardice.)

In May, ruling on a petition by the Muslim Union of Italy, a magistrate in the northern Italian city of Bergamo ordered writer Oriana Fallaci to stand trial for vilifying Islam in her book The Force of Reason. (She had previously been acquitted on a similar offense in France.) In September, the European Court of Human Rights affirmed a Turkish court's conviction of a publisher for issuing a novel, Abdullah Riza Ergüven's Yasak Tümceler, that purportedly "insulted the Prophet and religion."

In April, after virtually no public discussion, Norway's Parliament passed a law that punishes offensive remarks about any religion with up to three years' imprisonment — and places the burden of proof on the accused. Three months later, Britain's House of Commons approved a bill that would criminalize "words or behavior" that might "stir up racial or religious hatred."

For some Europeans in the expression business, government limits haven't been necessary: they've opted for self-censorship. After being "warned by Muslim friends" shortly after van Gogh's murder, Dutch movie director Albert Ter Heerdt decided to "postpone" a sequel to his "multicultural comedy" Shouf Shouf Habibi! And in January producer Gijs van de Westelaken canceled a screening of Submission at the Rotterdam Film Festival, whose theme was "censored films." (Instead, the audience saw two pictures sympathetic to suicide bombers.)

Read the whole article: Tolerance or Death!