On Friday July 11th, 2009, Ireland passed the Defamation Bill by one vote. One of the aspects of this bill would make it illegal to criticize religion… any religion under penalty of fines up to 25,000 Euros. That is the equivalent to nearly $35,000.An excerpt from the blasphemy clause:
Section 36Interpretation of the above legalese:
(1) A person who publishes or utters blasphemous matter shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable upon conviction on indictment to a fine not exceeding €100,000. [Amended to €25,000]
(2) For the purposes of this section, a person publishes or utters blasphemous matter if (a) he or she publishes or utters matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion, and (b) he or she intends, by the publication or utterance of the matter concerned, to cause such outrage.
This part of the bill makes it illegal to criticize any religion either verbally or in writing. Saying anything in which a “substantial number” of followers might find offensive would now be a crime in the Ireland. But the bill goes even further....Read the rest. Books critical of any religion can be confiscated by the police! See Section 37 of the law.
If I lived in Ireland, one entire portion of my home library would be seized, I guess. I'm referring, of course, to all my books which insult Islam.
Not to mention what's on my computers.
The Irish police are going to be chasing their own tails on this one.
7 comments:
Your library? Hah. I'm the resident atheist here, remember. They'd have to arrest my brain.
Does this mean that books criticizing religion in general (such as those by Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris) are now censored and made illegal in Ireland? Are they going to arrest every drunk who "takes the name of the lord in vain" on the streets of Dublin? Or will this boil down to another exclusive for Islam?
RRA,
Likely another exclusive for Islam.
I guess they'd want to confiscate some of my DVD's as well.
Dollars to donuts they'd let me keep my copy of the Koran, though.
Does Ireland want to go back to the Dark Ages?
It's easier to drink your troubles away and pretend the stealth Jihad doesn't exist.
Always On Watch,
I can't believe that this going on in Europe today! Its so stupid, its like the inquisition light. Yet the Irony is that Europe is actually in general less religious than America, I wonder if its largely because a lot European states do stuff like this.
Anonymous,
You wrote,
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Hey, so can I take those bastards to the cleaner with their koran? After all it calls Christians and Jews as sons of monkeys and pigs and is very critical of other religions.
It would be great to have that koran trash removed from our libraries!
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It would be a far better idea to fight laws like this one, than trying to use it for our purposes. For one thing, it goes against the sacred principals of freedom of speech and freedom of conscious. In addition any attempt to use this law to silence Muslim hate mongers, most likely will not work. For one thing, Muslim Stealth Jihadists could accuse you of blaspheming their religion, and in this climate that would most likely work. Whatever benefit the anti Jihad movement might get from such laws, will be far outweighed by the costs, and will probably do far more to hurt our cause then help it. It would be a mistake for us to attempt to use laws like these to our advantage. It would most likely backfire.
AOW stated:
"If I lived in Ireland, one entire portion of my home library would be seized, I guess. I'm referring, of course, to all my books which insult Islam."
Only a portion?
In the year 2000 - alone- Spain published more books than were published by the entire muslim world in the last 1300 years.
Few, if any of the books in any of our western libraries would pass muster - considering any number of issues are considered offensive to muslim sensibilities.
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