I thought this story would get some attention from the mainstream media. I was wrong.The only 'mainstream' site I found that mentioned it was the Austrian Times. They headlined their article Lecturer fined for calling Koran 'evil', though apparently, that wasn't the case.
Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff was put on trial for saying that "Islam is in a perpetual state of war with us", "Islam is vicious" and "Muslims hate us."
But apparently that's OK. What really bothered the judge, and what she fined Sabaditsch-Wolff for, was calling Muhammad a pedophile.
The Save Free Speech site summarized what the judge said:
The integration of muslims is surely a question of particular public interest – you are allowed to be critical – but not incitement of hatred
(- judge states the allowed utterances)
The language used in the seminars were not inciting hatred, but the utterances regarding muhammad and paedophilia were punishable.
“Paedophilia” is factually incorrect, since paedophilia is a sexual preference which solely or mainly is directed towards children. Nevertheless, it does not apply to mohammad. He was still married to Aisha when she was 18. It is a “denigration of religious teachings” and are found guilty and sentenced to 120 days, which approaches the minimum of € 480.
In other words, generalizing about all Muslims, is fine. But saying that Muhammad was a pedophile for having sex with a 9 year old, a fact which has been used by countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia to legally justify pedophilia today, is wrong.
Why is it wrong? Not because it's wrong to judge a man who lived 1400 years ago by today's standards, but because Muhammad continued to have sex with his very young wife after she turned 18.
The truth is, that it doesn't matter whether Muhammad was a pedophile or not. What's most important is what Muslims believe today. And as long as 'official Islam' justifies marrying off little girls by saying that Muhammad did it, I really don't see why it's insulting to call that 'pedophilia'.
