Denmark parliament adopts bill prohibiting Quran burnings
Denmark parliament adopts bill prohibiting Quran burnings
The burning of the Islamic holy book in Denmark has stirred outrage in Muslim-majority nations. Critics of the Quran burning law say it would undermine liberal freedoms in the Scandanavian country.
2 years imprisonment for burning any religious text? That's insane
There was an AMA on reddit some time ago with a guy who had been convicted for embezzlement. His imprisonment consisted of effectively living in the prison but otherwise being allowed to leave during the day, go to work, etc. That's probably the kind of imprisonment you can expect. I'm not saying that's not bad. I'm just saying, it's not as bad as you might think. I tried googling it but I can't find it.
Personally, I disagree with the decision but do understand it. The government just doesn't want more conflict between people, and it doesn't care how it gets it. It makes sense 'mechanically', but I think it's a significant blow to freedom of expression. It also adds to the list of reasons why people will vote more right wing in the future, which sucks.
Yep. The answer to the paradox of tolerance is absolutely NOT to capitulate to the intolerant.
Pissing on religious text would still be an option lmao
Edit: nvm I read the article, how lame lol
Damn, there goes using bible paper for joints (aka holy smokes)
Tolerance is not a moral requirement but a social contract.
By social contract I mean it's an agreement that I will tolerate you as long as you tolerate me.
Islamic groups literally want some sections of western society dead (queer community etc) and other sections subjugated (women). They violate the contract and we shouldn't be accepting of that.
tldr: We shouldn't pander to people who think a book burning means someone should die.
Not all Muslims are like that though. Most are very level headed and tolerant of others and their religions too. If all Muslims were how you described, with how many there are in the world there would be literal chaos every day.
What does the Quran say they are supposed to do to apostates?
There is literal chaos every day.
Completely agree. I've lived in Malaysia and they're pretty chilled there. Some places though Islam gets pretty full on. Check out Islamabad or Tehran sometime - yikes. Nothing like seeing a march of people chanting, 'Death to the west!' and flaying themselves bloody while doing it to realise Islam ramps up.
That's really a sad moment in history. Sure, it's really in bad taste if ones does it, but it's your property and it's just paper at the end of day.
They might as well start drawing the prophet Muhammad, it's probably cheaper too.
I am making this clear. This is a drawing of Mohammed, the founder of Islam in the 7th century.
a-little-too-well-regarded, pathologically lying pedophile.
"Hey bro, you like virgins?"
Based
stupid misleading headline! The bill covers not only the quran but the public burning of all books with importance for religious groups.
The law criminalizes the "inappropriate treatment of writings with significant importance for a recognized religious community."
Great, it's still a stupid and insane law. Prohibit ALL public burnings of books? Ok I think it's stupid, but whatever. But only protect those with religious significance? This is just an awful precedence.
Religions don't deserve respect, because they don't respect others. Nevermind the fact that they are essentially fables and folklore told by adults.
This feels weird to me. Book bans I'm wholly against. But also throwing people in jail for burning paper seems strange as well. Like, I'm queer as hell and used to be religious. But if you want to wrap a Bible in a rainbow flag and burn it, then whatever. Waste of resources. But throwing people in prison over something some fraction of any population believes in (without violence, racism or hatespeech) seems excessive and favors religion.
Violence, hatespeech, racism, banning books, obviously all bets are off. I just wish everyone could dial back everything about 10 notches.
According to the law, you can't wrap a Bible in a rainbow flag and burn it either. 'The law criminalizes the "inappropriate treatment of writings with significant importance for a recognized religious community."'
Over on YouTube, thunderfoot did a fun thought experiment. He filled a hard disk full of copies of the Quran and then proceeded to zero over all of them. Is destroying thousands of digital copies of the Quran equivalent to burning them?
I don't understand the replies here - this bill was drafted in response to multiple events where ethno-nationalists burned the Qur'an in front of audiences with the implicit intent to incite violence against Denmark's Muslim minority population. If you read the article, the bill bans the only the public burning of any religious book, not just the Qur'an. This bill would not "limit freedom of speech," it would limit a form of hate speech and arguably stochastic terrorism being employed by the far right in Denmark. I do not see a problem with this bill.
I agree. It's for the security of their democracy. Funny thing a Muslim was allowed to burn a Torah and a Holy Bible and those same people were upset. Tit for tat, now it's against the law.
Infringing rights to protect rights makes as much sense as fucking for virginity
Hate speech is a form of speech. It is a vile form but it is a form. Ideas that are noble and gentle don't need to be protected, ideas that are offensive do.
I am very sorry that the leaders of Denmark are willing to give up their right of freedom of speech of their population for so little. I wonder what rights they will give up next as part of their appeasement.
Would you also consider chants such as "death to all Jews/gays/black people" or actions such as burning trans flag as freedom of speech and do you believe it should be tolerated?
First western nation to fall due to demands from terrorist. Ask and they shall receive I guess.
This will be the first text in some insane dominos memes in the future.
Meme government.
Western nations give into terrorist demands going back to the French revolution. Some of those demands were for the freedom of speech that is being trampled on here or other rights and protections we hold dear. For recent examples look at the troubles or even that guy who shot shinzo abe and got the moonies out of Japan.
The focus shouldn't just be on the means for political change, though the means can be criticized, but the political change itself. Banning book burnings in this case is an afront to free speech and should not be implemented.
Oh yeah totally. If we can't burn religious text for the express purpose of passing people off, then the whole society is doomed snd were one slippery slope away from all the nordjnc countries having sharia law. I doubt the country will survive until Christmas honestly.
Its almost as bad as Germany banning nazi salutes.
As distasteful as it is, this falls squarely within the paradox of tolerance. There is no reason to burn the quran other than to stick it to "those" people. It's trolling, it's intolerant, it does not promote social peace, it does not even promote any kind of dialogue on religious bigotry, it's just an act of hatred, a fuck you. And the sovereign Danish parliament decided that in their country, the value of this particular fuck you is not worth the disturbance to the peace. They have decided to not tolerate this particular kind of intolerance. Disagree with them all you like, but I see a rationale and it's far from pointless. "Free speech absolutism" might be an American foundational value but that simply is not the case in the rest of the world. And a democracy, like Denmark, may legitimately decide to resolve the paradox in this way at this point in their history, and they are perfectly free to reverse this down the line. They chose to limit one freedom, that frankly is mostly used in a petulant, childish and intolerant way, in the interest of peace. Good on them.
Then they should ban burning the bible, vedic texts, etc. (I can get you a list if you want) too...
Read the article, they did:
Burning, tearing, or defiling religious texts in public could land people with a fine or up to two years behind bars. Destroying a holy text on video and disseminating the footage online could also put offenders in jail.
I personally believe that no discrimination against people based on religion, race, color of skin is appropriate. So I believe that any islamophobic symbol is incorrect.
However, same rule applies to the other side. No islamic minorities should show symbols which could be disrespectful towards different people.
I don't see how someone burning a copy of a book that they paid for themselves is discrimination. It is criticism and protest, but not discriminatory. It isn't denying anyone else's access to the words in the book. It's just making a political statement.
Ideas should always be allowed to be criticized. Inanimate objects shouldn't be given human rights.
So the general issue why burning such a copy should be considered incorrect is the fact that Quran, apart from being just another book, is a symbol of Islamic religion. Hence why it appears offensive to Muslims. Same logic applies to other symbols. Do you think it’s absolutely okay to come to a square and burn LGBTI or BLM flags. If you were a gay and saw someone else burning a rainbow flag, would you feel safe at such place?
I personally believe that no discrimination against people based on religion, race, color of skin is appropriate
One of these things is not like the other ones. People choose their religion, or at very least the indoctrinated choose to stay in it. People don't choose their race or color.
It is absolutely legitimate to discriminate against people because of absurd ideas they hold. If an adult told me they literally believed in Santa Claus, or that the skull God needs skulls for the skull throne, I might think less of them.
Eh, I get what they are trying to go for, but this kind of appeasement won't fix a group that doesn't believe in the democracy they live in. What, will they also ban drawing Mohammed since it also upsets muslims and thus incites violence?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The Danish parliament on Thursday approved legislation that would effectively prohibit Quran burnings in the northern European country.
Burning, tearing, or defiling religious texts in public could land people up to one or two years behind bars or a fine.
Destroying a holy text on video and then disseminating the footage online could also put offenders in jail.
The Danish Justice Ministry has said the law aims to combat the "systematic mockery" which raises terror threat levels in Denmark.
"History will judge us harshly for this, and with good reason," Inger Stojberg of the right-wing anti-immigration Denmark Democrats party said in response to the bill's passage.
The bill, backed by Denmark's center-right coalition government, was originally introduced in August and then amended due to freedom of speech concerns.
The original article contains 338 words, the summary contains 128 words. Saved 62%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Good. There's no good reason to burn books. Free speech doesn't require absolutism, it requires that we are capable of expressing our ideas. Yelling the N word doesn't express an idea, it's just offense. Ditto book burning. People who are absolutists are pretty much always being assholes.
Burning other people's books is of course bad. Burning your own books? Idk man, you bought it.
Blasphemy and racism are two very different things.
Blasphemy is a human right.
Besides, there are already laws against hate speech.
Different issue. I'm not debating categories of speech. I'm saying that speech that expresses no ideas but that is significantly hateful to a group of people shouldn't be protected. There are trade offs here: offensive speech that expresses political ideas (beyond "we hate you") is worthwhile and should be balanced against offense it may cause. I know this isn't a nice simple black and white answer but I think the real world isn't nice a simple. There are shades of grey. Other countries might weigh the tradeoffs differently and that's fine. Doesn't make this decision wrong, just that the tradeoffs are weighed differently to your intuitions
Book burnings are bad when they are used to prevent the free sharing of information or ideas. It is a form of censorship. Burning the Quran is not censorship, because this is not an attempt to ban the Quran or prevent anyone from reading it. Its an entirely symbolic gesture. Its comparable to burning the American flag, which I'm guessing you're not so against.
I absolutely agree.
Good. The burning were done specifically to incite hatred and create social turmoil, for the explicit purpose of turning Muslims and non Muslims against each other. Much like free speech does not cover threat or calls to violence, stopping these burnings stops these bad actors while leaving your right to free /speech/ unaffected, so if you want to criticise islam and Muslims, you can still say whatever you want about them, so any claims about free speech are kinda moot.
Quite frankly it should be illegal to burn holy books/flags/effigies/etc.
What is possibly gained by symbolically lighting someone's holy book on fire? Is religion regressive? Absolutely. But all you're doing is creating righteous indignation in the group you disagree with, making them out to be the sympathetic party, and it kind of makes you look like a culture warrior tool to do the burning.
Insulting any religion in this way is stupid. It's not going to make them agree with you. They are just going to hate you.
Also this is not just for the Quran but all other religious books as it should be. Good job Denmark.
Yeah, good job clamping down on that pesky freedom of speech