Very good "tongue in cheek" article in the FT today about this topic, link here.

No no no, there is no right/left issues here among intellectuals about religion. The most difficult intellectuals to understand for non-French people are Zemmour and Finkielkraut. Bruckner and Glucksman are not exactly left-compatible anymore either. They are classified as right-wing big time but only in a French tradition. Don't try to read French politics and French cultural debate with anglo-saxon categories, it just can't be done. French right-wing of the Gaullian tradition is very pro-secularism, and even a faction of the Front national is pro-secularism in the French traditional way, only the strict catholic movement of the extreme right FN wants to change it. The issue is not on that left/right spectrum in my opinion, but nobody is asking for my opinion.

__________________
Es wird nichts ausgelassen, um mich hier herauszuekeln. Ein Lehrbuch. False accusations and attacks continue. There is no stopping righteous people when they are wrong.

Aren't we all stuck in the Sartre era...

You can add to the list: Renaud Camus, Denis Tillinac....also Ivan Rioufol

Faltrad wrote in my (dis)reputation entry:
The praise of a tyrannical-style, centrally enacted revolution and the method of discourse correlate.

Nice try.

Four buses set on fire in Copenhagen; possibly linked to boycott Israel adverts on the buses, link here.

I see the bus company caved in and stopped the Israel boycott adverts.

A US air strike in Yemen has reportedly killed Nasser al-Ansi, a top militant of al-Qaeda, who claimed his group was behind the attack on the Paris offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in January, in which 12 people died.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-32629816

Law of unintended consequences strikes again!
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.

Quote here.

Not quite:
- With a blasphemy law, it is only legal to mock atheists' and secular views.
- Without blasphemy law, the protection laws against insults and defamation are applicable to all in the same way.

But who would raise the case of insults and defamation against a religion?
If we talk about Muslim (which is the topic here) there is no formal structure so who would be allowed to stand for the religion in such a case?
Some countries have a Grand Imam or a Grand Mufti but they often do not have any legal standing. Anyway Norway does not have an official one.

In February Norwegian Muslims organised a peace vigil in Oslo in a show of solidarity with Jews a week after fatal shootings in Denmark targeted a synagogue and free speech seminar. Very positive expression.

The same as any other insults and defamation: the actual victim. It is wrong to imply that a blasphemy is the only concept that guarantee freedom of religion. From a French perspective, it's the exact other way around. A blasphemy law is a de facto censorship of secular culture. Totally unacceptable by French standards. It might be acceptable by other standards, I do understand that. Let the Norwegians decide their own.

Âbout "The same as any other insults and defamation: the actual victim. " But in the case of insulting a religion then who would be the actual victim? I do not see God dropping into the local police station and complaining?
I do not see laws about insults and defamation being any help in the case of religions.

Let me take this argument by the horns.


If blasphemy laws are censorship of secular culture, what are things like Holocaust denial laws? Censorship in the interests of good taste, censorship in defending values, whereby the point at which values permute into normatisms is a thin line? Why should one type of hate speech be acceptable and another be censored? Isn't the French position here trying to split hairs? Either you have free speech or you don't?

About "If blasphemy laws are censorship of secular culture, what are things like Holocaust denial laws?"

In the case of blasphemy laws people are denying God which is a question of belief not fact.
In the case of Holocaust denial it is a question of fact not belief.

I assume the blasphemy laws also do not allow cartoons whereas (I assume) the Holocaust denial laws are not against cartoons unless they contain denials.

One's history and the other's make-believe.

You're an adult and you can't see the difference?

But isn't the whole point about Holocaust denial laws not that they are lies (as freedom of speech allows you to disseminate lies, otherwise you would have to ban astrology for example) but that these particular lies are created with the intent of spreading hate and attacking the credibility and integrity of survivors and other witnesses and promoting hate against the Jewish religion and people in general.


Similarly, you could argue that a Mohamed caricature is intended to ridicule and attack the integrity of those who follow him and promote and justify hate against them.


To me, there isn't that much of a difference.

That's probably why we need such laws. For people who can't see the difference.

Do you appreciate that to present a convincing argument that the holocaust didn't actually happen, on would need to present forged documentary evidence to back this up.
Would you be happy for political parties seeking to gain power in a country to do this or just individuals?

About "otherwise you would have to ban astrology for example" but then you would have to ban religion which is also a belief system?

There is a basic difference between denying facts and denying beliefs