On February 21, 2012, five members of a Russian punk collective called Pussy Riot entered the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow. Singing “Mother of God, Chase Putin Out!,” and clad in brightly colored dresses, leggings, and balaclavas, the women danced, kneeled, and crossed themselves in front of the Cathedral’s high altar. Within less than a minute they were apprehended by security guards and removed from the sanctuary. On March 3rd, the day before the controversial re-election of Vladimir Putin, three members of the band were arrested. They were charged with “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.” And in August they were convicted and sentenced to two years in prison.
Posts Tagged ‘freedom of speech’
August 20th, 2012
Freedom without religious freedom?
posted by Candice ScharfRecently on Big Questions Online (BQO), Thomas Farr puts forth and analyzes the question, “Is religious freedom necessary for other freedoms to flourish?”
February 21st, 2012
Temporary restraining order on city’s ban
posted by Candice ScharfThis past Thursday, February 16th, Andy Newman reported for the New York Times that Judge Preska of the Federal District Court in Manhattan had issued a 10-day restraining order on the city’s ban of churches worshiping in public schools.
October 31st, 2011
Taking a stance
posted by Lars Tønder
Akeel Bilgrami’s “Secularism: It’s Content and Context” is both fascinating and wide-ranging… Whether or not one agrees with the notion of an internally cohesive concept of secularism—and whether or not one agrees that this concept is more limited than we have come to think it is—one might still ask if secularism should assert itself through a lexical ordering like the one envisioned by Bilgrami. Will a prioritization of political ideals seem fair to members of a secular society, and, perhaps more importantly, does it capture the challenges that face the kind of democracies we currently characterize as governed by secularism?
June 14th, 2011
Fighting words that are not fought
posted by Sindre Bangstad
“Under what conditions does freedom of speech become freedom to hate?” Judith Butler recently asked. Here I will explore these issues in light of recent developments concerning the freedom of speech in Norway. I will argue that applying a cosmopolitan liberal approach to freedom of speech (i.e., along U. S. First Amendment lines) in a European context in which anti-Muslim and anti-immigration discourses are becoming ever more poisonous and pervasive risks underestimating the power dynamics inherent to the practice of free speech in contemporary Europe as well as overestimating the “mainstream” political and intellectual will to mobilize against the populist right-wing’s instrumentalized Islamophobia.
March 17th, 2011
Poppies and Prophets
posted by Andrew March
Last November 11, two British Muslims, purportedly members of an organization calling itself “Muslims Against Crusades” (MAC), were arrested under the UK Public Order Act. They were accused of burning three oversized poppies at a Remembrance Day ceremony and interrupting a two-minute moment of silence with such chants as “Burn, burn, British soldiers, British soldiers, burn in hell!” and “British soldiers: murderers! British soldiers: rapists! British soldiers: terrorists!” Last week, one of the two activists, Emdadur Choudhury, was found guilty under Section 5 of the Public Order Act of burning the poppies in a way that was likely to cause “harassment, harm or distress” to those who witnessed it, and was fined £50. . . . While it is very tempting for Muslims, and those sympathetic to the situation of Muslims in Europe, to see a case like this as evidence of double-standards—Muslim speech is suppressed on grounds of injury to non-Muslims, while the reverse is not; speech injurious to secular affect is suppressed, while speech injurious to religious affect is not—this might also be an occasion for some general reflection on the problem of injurious speech in morally pluralist contexts.
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