1,300-year-old Islamic note may solve mystery

Some 1300 year old grafitti could change how the muslim world looks at the koran, the terrorist traing manual. A photo of an inscription etched by an Arabic traveler. The traveler engraved his name on the block of red sandstone over 1,300 years ago in a location northwest of Saudi Arabia.

An Arabic traveler who engraved his name on a block of red sandstone over 1,300 years ago may help solve a question about the Qur'an that has vexed historians for hundreds of years: Why was the text seemingly written without diacritical marks?
Diacritical marks, which include accent marks, tildes, umlauts and other notations, help to distinguish one letter from another and aid in pronunciation. When added or removed, they can completely change the meaning of a word or sentence.

According to researcher Ali ibn Ibrahim Ghabban, who, with his wife, discovered the 644 A.D. inscription northwest of Saudi Arabia, "It is an immensely important find, since it is our earliest dated Arabic inscription."
Ghabban, a member of the Supreme Commission for Tourism, Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, added that it also "shows evidence of a fully-fledged system of diacritical marks."

"Whether the Qur'an was originally written in a script that contained diacritical marks is very important because Western Qur'an scholars generally say that it wasn't and therefore feel free to make some amendments to the Qur'anic text by changing the diacritical marks to give it a different meaning, which is, of course, very unpopular with modern Muslim scholars and Muslims in general, who mostly feel that the Qur'anic text they use is the original text revealed to Muhammad by God," he said.

Although the earliest Islamic inscription, which is also the world's second oldest evidence for written Arabic, does not include punctuation or vowel marks, it does contain markings to distinguish consonants that are identical in shape. This proves such a marking system was already in place before the earliest known copies of the Qur'an, which date to sometime between 652 and 680 A.D., Hoyland indicated.

Ghabban now believes Muhammad's close associates and early followers "stripped Qur'ans of diacritical marks" in order to permit "Muslims to read the Qur'an as it was revealed to Muhammad in the various dialects of the Arabs, and allowing the skeleton of the word to bear all the meanings which appear in it."

Without diacritical marks, for example, a sentence such as, "I took with my whole hands," can also be interpreted as, "I took with my fingertips."

Illinois Muslim student pleads not guilty to fabricating hate-crime hoax

Pious hoaxer? No, lying lier, muslim.

Safia Jilani Update: she is charged with fabricating a hate crime in which a man hit her on the head and scrawled a hate message against Muslims on a nearby bathroom mirror. The entire campus united behind her; Muslim students were offered escorts to and from classes; and all of Elmhurst College was afroth with righteous indignation against the haters. The only problem is that it looks as if Safia Jilani made it all up -- and now the poor thing is "in treatment." It wouldn't be surprising if she suddenly came down with a mental illness, a la Aafia Siddiqui.

A Muslim student who allegedly made a false claim that a masked man attacked her after he wrote anti- Islamic slurs in a women's restroom at Elmhurst College pleaded not guilty Monday to a charge of disorderly conduct. Safia Jilani, 19, made no public comment.
Outside the DuPage County courtroom, her attorney, Terry Ekl, said "she is in treatment, and I hope the public wouldn't judge her until all the facts are known."
He declined to specify the type of treatment.

The followers of Old Mo love to be the victims. It plays on our political correctness. She was assumed to be the victim. Instead she is the perpetrator of a crime. She is conveniently mentally ill or something like that. But then again ALL MUSLIMS ARE MENTAL.

Islam VS Judaism

In 2007 Islam and Judaism's holiest holidays overlapped for 10 days.Muslims racked up 397 dead bodies in 94 terror attacks across 10 countries during this time... while Jews worked on their 159th Nobel Prize.

Acid Attack Part 2

This Afghan girl says she is determined to resume her studies despite being disfigured with acid by Islamic fundamentalists. Unfortunately for her, religion is first priority in Islam - even in the West, where most Muslims adamantly oppose the effort to keep the Taliban from control.

Taliban murders mullah critical of suicide operations

The mullah probably had the most recent attack in mind, where the vast majority killed or injured were fellow Afghanis (8 killed, over 70 injured); one US soldier died.
"Taliban kill mullah critical of suicide attacks," from the AP, November 14 (thanks to Dionysios):
KABUL, Afghanistan - Suspected Taliban militants killed a religious leader in western Afghanistan after he criticized the use of suicide attacks as a weapon of war in the country, an Afghan official said Friday.
Militants kidnapped Shamsudin Agha in Farah province's Anar Dara district on Tuesday, days after he led prayers condemning the practice of using suicide attacks, said provincial police Chief Abdul Ghafar Watandar.
Suicide attacks are one of the Taliban's preferred tactics in their assaults against Afghan and foreign troops. Most of the victims of such attacks have been civilians.
Authorities recovered Agha's body on Wednesday night, Watandar said.
Violence by the Taliban and other insurgent groups has spiked this year to record levels. Attacks are up 30 percent from 2007, military officials say...

The price of trying to get an education

Girl sprayed in face with acid: "I will go to my school if they [Taliban] kill me"

KABUL: An Afghan teenager whose face was burned in an acid attack by suspected extremists vowed from her hospital bed yesterday to continue going to school even if it put her life in danger.
Men on motorbikes used a water pistol to spray acid into the faces of Shamsia and around dozen other girls as they arrived at school wearing all-covering burqas in Kandahar on Wednesday.
Shamsia, 17, was the most badly wounded and had some acid enter her eyes. She was transferred to a military hospital in Kabul where she was visited yesterday by other schoolgirls, accompanied by media.
"I will go to my school if they kill me," she told reporters. "My message for the enemies is that if they do this 100 times, I am still going to continue my studies."
It is not clear who carried out the attack which President Hamid Karzai and other officials blamed on the "enemies of Afghanistan" - a broad term that most often refers to extremist Taliban insurgents.
However a Taliban spokesman, Yousuf Ahmadi, said by telephone his group would "never do such a cowardly thing against girls and children".

They only threaten to "do such a cowardly thing against girls and children"; but surely they would never really act on such threats??

The conservative Islamic 1996-2001 Taliban regime stopped girls from going to school. The education sector has since become among the main targets of a wave of unrest linked to an insurgency led by the hardliners.
This year around 115 schools have been set on fire, bombed or bulldozed in attacks education ministry spokesman Hamed Elmi blamed on "the opposition".
About 120 people in the education sector have been killed in attacks, he said.
Security fears have caused more than 640 schools to close, most of them in volatile districts in the south and east of the country, Elmi said.

Palestinian human rights activists wait on a bus.

This is what human rights activists look like in Gaza. Notice the tools of their trade, masks, AK-47s, and fatigues. Notice the beautiful neighborhood that the muslims have created for themselves. This is what any part of the West will look like if the muslims continue to be allowed to spread throughout the West.

Offensive-to-Islam decals prevent veteran from visiting grave of military son

Here's one of those "offensive" decals that have caused U.S. officials to ban a Vietnam vet from visiting the grave of his fallen son -- who died in the al-Qaeda U.S.S. Cole bomb attack of 2000.

UK: Muslim man strangles, stabs, and slits throat of "petite" 19 year-old Catholic girl

He deemed her "sexually provocative"

Also, she, a non-Muslim -- Catholic no less -- was dating his Muslim roommate. "Muslim killed Catholic girl in love with flatmate."

A TEENAGER was brutally murdered by her boyfriend's Muslim flatmate because he did not approve of him going out with a Catholic.
Lidia Motylska, 19, was strangled in an alleyway in Leeds by Iraqi immigrant Abobakir Jabari who objected to his Kurdish flatmate's relationship with her.
Yesterday Jabari, 39, who was given British citizenship in 2005, pleaded guilty at Sheffield Crown Court to murdering the petite Polish teenager.
The court heard he garrotted her from behind, using the cord from his tracksuit bottoms, before inflicting "gratuitous" wounds on her lifeless body. He stabbed her repeatedly in the chest and stomach and slit her throat.
Sentencing Jabari to life imprisonment with a minimum tariff of 19-and-a-half years, Mr Justice McKinnon said the murder involved an exceptional degree of violence.
"There is a suspicion that you lured this young woman to her death and marked your disapproval of her and her relationship by gratuitous violence upon her," he said.
The court heard that Jabari grew up in Iraq and was conscripted to the Iraqi army but then deserted. He became involved with the Communist party and later helped opponents of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's regime flee to Syria.
He came to England in 1999 with his then wife, but they separated in 2003 and he went on to gain British citizenship.
In July 2004 he began working at Symphony Kitchens in Gelderd Lane, Leeds.
Through his work, he met both Miss Motylska and Ajeen Jabaridia, a fellow Kurdish Iraqi who moved in with him at a flat in Oatland Heights in the Little London area of the city.
But he was to become increasingly hostile when the pair became romantically involved.
Prosecuting, Simon Myerson QC said: "He disliked the fact that his Kurdish friend was going out with a Polish Catholic.
"He did not like Lidia to sleep at their flat. He disapproved of Lidia's behaviour in public and thought it seemed sexually provocative."
He went on: "He told her that Ajeen should not be seeing her because she was a Polish and Catholic girl."
Miss Motylska, who lived with her mother Renata in Beeston, Leeds, thought she might be pregnant with Mr Jabaridia's child, the court heard, though this turned out not to be the case.
On the evening of the murder in October last year, she had arranged to meet Jabari and got off a bus near his home at 6.45pm.
Ten minutes later, two passers-by called 999, reporting that they had seen a woman on the ground in an alleyway in Lincoln Green, with a man sitting over her "grunting" and holding her around the neck.
When police arrived at 7pm, the teenager was dead, with deep stab wounds and her throat slit "from ear to ear".
The judge said one explanation for the slash injuries to her abdomen could have been an "expression of disapproval at her pregnancy and her relationship".
Immediately after the attack, Jabari set about creating an alibi by inviting friends to his flat to watch Arsenal play Slavia Prague in a Champions League football match.
A keen Arsenal fan, Mr Jabaridia had tried to telephone his girlfriend each time the team scored, but got no reply.
He and Miss Motylska's mother reported the teenager missing the next day.
After the sentencing, Det Supt Bill Shackleton from West Yorkshire Police said: "This was a brutal and calculated murder."
The victim's family were too upset to speak.

Afghanistan: Non-burqa wearing school-girls sprayed with acid

Three Afghan schoolgirls suffered serious burns when attackers sprayed acid in their faces as they walked to school. Two men riding a motorcycle attacked a group of 15 girls with an acid-filled water pistol in the southern city of Kandahar, leaving six needing hospital treatment, three of them for serious injuries.
A government official said the attackers ripped off the girls' headscarves before the attack and another report said those wearing the full-length burqa to cover themselves had been left untouched.
It is not known who carried out the attack but girls were banned from going to school under the Taliban regime between 1996 and 2001.
One 16-year-old victim, who gave her name as Atifa, said: "We were on the way to school when two men on motorbikes stopped next to us.
"One of them threw acid on my sister's face. I tried to help her and then they threw acid on me too.
"We were shouting and people came to see what was going on, then the two men escaped."
A government statement condemned the attack as "un-Islamic", adding the attackers "cannot prevent six million children going to school."

Fatwa bans emoticons

"Emoticons are forbidden because of its imitation to Allah’s creatures whether it is original or mixture or even deformed one and since the picture is the face and the face is what makes the real picture then emoticons which represent faces that express emotions then all that add up to make them Haram."

Another fatwa states the following:

"A woman should not use these images when speaking to a man who is not her mahram, because these faces are used to express how she is feeling, so it is as if she is smiling, laughing, acting shy and so on, and a woman should not do that with a non-mahram man.
It is only permissible for a woman to speak to men in cases of necessity, so long as that is in a public chat room and not in private correspondence."

Vietnam veteran denied right to visit grave of sailor son who was killed in U.S.S. Cole bombing for displaying bumper stickers deemed "offensive" to I

To which one of his lawyers observes: “Our troops are being killed by Islamic terrorists, 9/11 was caused by Islamic terrorists, these terrorists want to destroy America, the Islamic countries persecute Christians, and now the military is victimizing a father whose son was killed by Islamic terrorists while serving our nation.”

Ann Arbor, Nov 13, 2008 / 06:56 am (CNA).- A Marine veteran whose anti-terrorist and anti-Islam vehicle decals hindered him in visiting the grave of his fallen son at Arlington National Cemetery has filed a federal lawsuit challenging the military order which rebuked his display of the decals.
Jesse Nieto, a 25-year Marine veteran, served two combat tours in Vietnam. His youngest son, Marc, was one of the seventeen sailors killed in the terrorist bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in October of 2000.
Since 1994 Nieto has been a civilian employee at the Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. In 2001 he began displaying various decals on his vehicle expressing sentiments such as “Remember the Cole, 12 Oct 2000,” “Islam=Terrorism” and “We Died, They Rejoiced.”
On July 31, 2008, two military police officers ticketed Nieto for displaying “offensive material.”
After Nieto refused to remove all allegedly offending decals from his vehicle, the Base Magistrate issued a written order ordering Nieto to remove his vehicle from the base until all decals were removed. The order banned his vehicle from all other federal installations, and reportedly prevented him from driving onto the grounds of Arlington National Cemetery.
The Ann Arbor-based Thomas More Law Center filed a federal civil rights lawsuit this week on Nieto’s behalf against the Camp Lejeune Commanding Officer and the Base Magistrate in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina. The lawsuit claims that the military’s ban on Nieto’s vehicle decals violates his constitutional rights to freedom of speech and the equal protection of the law.
“The banning of these decals is political correctness run amuck in the military,” charged Richard Thompson, President and Chief Counsel of the Thomas More Law Center. “Our troops are being killed by Islamic terrorists, 9/11 was caused by Islamic terrorists, these terrorists want to destroy America, the Islamic countries persecute Christians, and now the military is victimizing a father whose son was killed by Islamic terrorists while serving our nation.”
Thompson speculated that the Marine command would have to eliminate the Marine’s Hymn because “the phrase ‘to the shores of Tripoli’ celebrates the Marine victory over Islamic forces in the Barbary Coast War and the Battle of Derne.”...

Muslims get last laugh at Swift: Plant must pay $365,000 to Muslims fired for walking off job

MINNEAPOLIS — Under a settlement to a federal lawsuit, up to 100 Somali Muslims who are current or former workers at Gold'n Plump Inc. will receive a total of $365,000.
The settlement was filed in Minneapolis on Friday. It sprang from allegations of religious discrimination at the company's chicken processing plants in Cold Spring and Arcadia, Wis.
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed lawsuits against St. Cloud-based Gold'n Plump and the Work Connection Inc., an employment agency in St. Paul, which handled some hiring for the plant.
Under the settlement, Gold'n Plump agreed to pay $215,000 to workers who were terminated for taking prayer breaks.
The Work Connection will pay $150,000 to workers who were asked to sign a form acknowledging that they might be required to handle pork, which many Muslims consider unclean....

So the proposition that Muslims have special privileges in American society, to which others are not privy, is now enshrined in precedent.

Breaking News: Political correctness "hampering battle against extremism" in UK

The EU terror-chief agrees. Meanwhile, the US government is nervous about using words such as mujahid, umma, and caliphate.

Attempts to turn young people away from Islamic extremism are being hampered by politically-correct language, according to a new report.
Ministers last year directed councils to use the terms "anti-Islamic activity" and "community resilience" instead of terrorism and extremism, as part of a drive to win over the Muslim community.
But the rebranding has spread confusion and is preventing local authorities and public bodies from talking openly about the radicalisation of young people.
A report for the Home Office and Department for Communities and Local Government found that public services were not communicating policies "for fear that using more direct language may exacerbate community tensions."
It quoted an unnamed council director as saying: "Switching language from 'extremism' to 'community resilience' causes confusion.
"The key thing is about who the words come from – if they come from a respected religious or community member they will have more impact than if it comes from a government minister."
A council chief executive interviewed in the report said: "People are worried about saying the wrong thing and being labelled as racist."
The Audit Commission and Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) report urged the Government to consult local leaders before issuing further directions about how anti-extremism policies should to be communicated.
The report also found that councils and police given more than £6 million to stop young people turning to violent extremism "lacked intelligence" about where to focus resources.
Some 70 councils in England will receive a further £45 million by 2011 as part of the "Prevent" agenda.
The programme is aimed at encouraging Muslims to identify themselves as part of British society, reject extremist ideology and activities, and encourage others to do the same.
The report, Preventing Violent Extremism: Learning And Development, found some police and local authority partnerships "lacked knowledge" about how Prevent schemes should work, and had no means of measuring success or failure.
The Department of Communities said new instructions have been issued to local authorities on improving terror prevention.

"A brilliant and remarkable analysis and exposé of how Western society has succumbed corruptively to intimidation and appeasement and the demands of r

"Robert Spencer has written the definitive book on radical jihadists. It's a brilliant and remarkable analysis and exposé of how Western society has succumbed corruptively to intimidation and appeasement and the demands of radical Islam. This book is a MUST READ for anyone wanting to know the truth about radical Islam's threat to the West and to moderate Muslims." -- Steven Emerson, author of American Jihad: The Terrorists Living among Us.

Robert Spencer is a great author. I personally have read many of his books. "The Truth About Muhammad" and "Religion of Peace?" are two of them. Both are well written and very informative.

Somali Al-Qaeda groups threatens Denmark over Motoons

"Sleep with thoughts of our sword, which is dripping with your blood"

Muslims "will never forget the ridicule of the best human beings in the world and of the last messenger." And some of them are still aching to kill for it.

Militant groups in Africa are threatening Denmark. According to the PET [Danish Security and Intelligence Service], Danish interests abroad are the most likely targets.
Denmark and Danes abroad are again being threatened with terrorism after the reprinting of the Muhammad caricatures.
This time, the warning comes not from Pakistan or Afghanistan, but from a Sunni Muslim group in Somalia that is known to have training camps and close ties to the Al-Qa'idah terrorist network. In a video posted to the Internet, a recruit from the Al-Shabab group vows revenge against "the dirty dogs in Denmark."
"May God break their hands for what they have done," the young man prays. He is masked by a PLO scarf and is posing behind an antitank missile. In broken English, he promises that Muslims "will never forget the ridicule of the best human beings in the world and of the last messenger."
"So sleep with thoughts of our sword, which is dripping with your blood," is the message from the windblown edge of a forest.
Focus on Embassies
After Danish newspapers reprinted the Muhammad caricatures in February, following the exposure of plans to murder cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, the Danish Embassy in Pakistan was hit by a suicide attack that killed eight people. At the same time, the Afghan Al-Qa'idah warned "this is only the beginning, God willing."
Against that background, security at Danish embassies abroad has been stepped up considerably, and the Foreign Ministry is preparing to spend 100 million kroner on better surveillance of embassies in the Middle East, North Africa, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.
Over the last six months, the Danish Security and Intelligence Service has raised the threat level twice. In June, the PET wrote that a terrorist attack on Danish interests abroad could take place "without warning."...

Sharia creeps in Canada target magazine for article on honor killing

Remember Aqsa Parvez, victim of an honor killing in Canada?

Assault on Free Speech Update -- but sleep on, folks. We all know it can't happen here, and that the real problem is that someone might have put on her coat in a way that made someone else think she was making the Hitler salute. There ain't no possible way that "hate speech" codes could be enacted in the United States, what with the First Amendment, right? Right?
Just remember how narrowly the Second Amendment survived a serious Supreme Court challenge not very long ago.

A group called the Urban Alliance on Race Relations has created a Facebook page, urging people to phone [Toronto Life editor Sarah] Fulford and express their concerns about Mary Rogan’s cover feature on Aqsa Parvez, the 16-year-old who was murdered last year. After Parvez was strangled, her father Muhammad Parvez phoned 911 and told the dispatcher that he had killed his daughter. Muhammad and his son Waqas will be tried sometime next year.
The Facebook group, which currently has 127 members, offers five “talking points”, which callers are encouraged to bring up in phone conversations or messages to Fulford.
Heres's one of their "talking points":
The question, "Has multiculturalism gone too far?" suggests that Muslims and immigrants are threats to Canadian society, rather than contributing members to Canadian society. The idea that "our" tolerance or respect for cultural diversity has let "them" continue their oppressive and dangerous behaviours is not only based on racist and Islamophobic stereotyping of diverse Muslim and immigrant communities, but also ignores the ongoing racism that exists in Canada despite our public commitment to multiculturalism.
Actually, belligerents like this group are the reason Muslims are "perceived as a threat to Canadian society." It's hard to see what Muslims do "contribute" to Canadian society when their most visible representatives are bullies and parasites like Mohammed Al-Sharpton. [...]

Anyway, here we go again. This group is, typically, more upset about Islam being "insulted" and "misrepresented" by the violence perpetrated by its own members (and by a mere infidel's decision to publish an article about it) than by the actual death of a young girl....

Rocket attack on Israel not to escalate into full war

"Peace" is preserved, for now. After firing nine (failed) rockets, Palestinian source feels that "retaliation...deemed adequate."

Palestinian organizations announce they have decide[d] to return to original ceasefire agreement after firing nine rockets at Israel Friday; retaliation to IDF Gaza op deemed adequate, says sourceAli Waked
Following the Qassam fire that rained down on the south of Israel Friday, Hamas' security forces announced they would begin cracking down on the fire emerging from the Gaza Strip.
The organization's internal security agents began to mobilize Friday evening towards Sejaiya district in an attempt to halt the rocket fire. According to Hamas the agents even succeeded in blocking an Islamic Jihad vehicle driving a Qassam-launching cell. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the rocket fire on Friday.
Despite the recent escalation of violence, sources from the Gaza Strip told Ynet that due to current talks among the Palestinian organizations and pressure applied by Egypt over the Qassam fire, the Gazan groups were leaning towards ceasing the fire over the next few hours and returning to the original truce agreement with Israel.
"The organizations are currently leaning towards continuing the ceasefire," a senior Gazan official told Ynet.
But the official noted that there was still some indecision within Hamas, regarding the question of whether the organization would continue to maintain the agreement with Israel.
The source said, however, that over the next few hours the fire would in all likeliness cease, as the organizations judged that they had adequately retaliated to the IDF operation in the central Gaza Strip earlier this week.
The operation exposed a tunnel that had been intended for the kidnapping of IDF soldiers. It resulted in the deaths of seven Palestinians. The army had postulated that the operation would lead to Qassam fire on the Negev, but allowed that the ceasefire would probably be preserved.

Muslim medic in UK: Muslim men "think they have God-given right to beat wives"

Gee, where could they have gotten that idea?

"Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other, and because they spend of their property (for the support of women). So good women are the obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah hath guarded. As for those from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and scourge them." -- Qur'an 4:34

Fatima Husain, a consultant in obstetrics and gynaecology, has told how she sees Muslim women coming for treatment with strangle marks around their necks and bruises on their pregnant bumps.
She also claimed that problems develop because many followers of Islam are fearful of discussing sex, contraception and infertility.
Dr Husain, who works at Heatherwood and Wexham Park Hospitals in Berkshire, told the Muslim News that many women ask to be referred to her specialist clinics because she is a hijab-wearing Muslim, allowing her to discover the true scale of domestic violence in her religious community.
She said: "I've seen injuries on some of my patients that I wouldn't dream would happen to pregnant women.
"I've seen strangle marks, finger marks on their necks and bruises on their pregnant abdomens.
"Domestic violence is supposedly equally divided amongst the various groups but I get the impression it is more common in Muslims.
"Some Muslim men think they have a God-given right to be physically violent to their spouses. I see the result of all this when they are admitted as my patients."...

Dutch scrap blasphemy law

A controversial anti-blasphemy law is being scrapped by the Dutch government. The move is remarkable as two of the current three members of the ruling coalition are Christian parties and they had originally wanted to maintain the ban.
In scrapping the law the cabinet is meeting the demand of parliament where a majority of parties argued that offering religious groups an extra layer of legal protection is outdated.
As an alternative the cabinet is now seeking to strengthen anti-discrimination laws against groups whatever their background, thus taking the religious component out of the equation.
Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin, says the law will now offer the same protection to all.
Freedom of speech/from discrimination
There has been much discussion about the balance between freedom of speech and the right not to be discriminated against in the past few years in the Netherlands, particularly around the role of Islam in society.
Populist politicians like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who has now left the Dutch political scene, and Geert Wilders, have been constant critics of what they see as the negative influence of Islam on society. [...]
Threat of prosecution
The Dutch anti-blasphemy law was much talked about - against the backdrop of the continual criticism of Fitna and of its maker Geert Wilders - as a possible means of redress for those who felt offended. Stand-up comedians and cartoonists who sought to satirise extremist Islam have also found themselves being threatened with possible prosecution under the anti-blasphemy law in the past few years.
The discussion about the use of the law, which dates back to the 1930s, made a lot of people worried that the right to freedom of speech was being eroded and that the rights of the religious not to be offended was being given the upper hand....
It appears we were a little hasty in celebrating the demise of the Dutch blasphemy laws.
Danish journalist Flemming Rose has contacted MWW, relating the concerns of a Dutch colleague about this supposed repeal. All is not as it seems.
The intention is to introduce the concept of “indirect insult” and expand an existing law which protects people on the basis of race, age, disability, and sexual orientation to include protection on the basis of religion or “conviction”. This means that remarks directed at Islam, Christianity, Buddism or - depending on your interpretation of “conviction” - even homeopathy and astrology, could be interpreted as indirect insults to people, and prosecuted as such.
According to a commenter on the original story, this law carries a maximum sentence of 12 months, whereas the original defunct blasphemy law carried a maximum 3 month sentence.
Writes Rose:
This spring the Dutch minister of justice Hirsch Ballin wrote a note to parliament asking them to consider stiffening blasphemy laws. In the aftermath of the scandal surrounding the arrest of Gregorius Nekschot parliament refused to go along, and this proposal is the compromise that the government came up with.