Friendly Humanist

Helsinki city councillor Jussi Halla-aho has been fined 330 Euros for a blog post [in Finnish, English translation here] in which he criticised the Muslim prophet Mohammed for being a paedophile. While I don’t particularly like his tone, it worries me that his prosecution was under an anti-blasphemy law. As far as I can tell, blasphemy tends to mean “someone claims offense due to their religious beliefs”. And hurt feelings – even really hurt feelings – are never a good excuse to limit free speech. To anyone who supports blasphemy laws, let me suggest that you look for alternative ways to deal with the matter. Ways that don’t involve trampling other people’s rights.

Thanks to Friendly Atheist for bringing this item to my attention.

This entry was posted on 2009/09/21 at 09:10 and is filed under news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.