Danelaw

Via Wikipedia I learn the following fun facts about Danish law:

According to section 140 of the Criminal Code any person, who, in public, ridicules or insults the dogmas of worship of any lawfully existing religious community in Denmark shall be liable to imprisonment for any term not exceeding four months or, in mitigating circumstances, to a fine. Section 266b of the Criminal Code criminalizes the dissemination of statements or other information by which a group of people are threatened, insulted or degraded on account of e.g. their religion.

In his decision the Regional Public Prosecutor states that the term ”other information” in section 266b includes cartoons, just as cartoons must be considered covered bysection 140 considering that the object of the criminalisation is the insult and not the form, which the insult takes.

In his decision the Regional Public Prosecutor also states, that when assessing what constitutes a offence under section 140 and section 266b the right to freedom of speech must be taken into consideration and that the right to freedom of speech must be exercised with the necessary respect for other human rights, including the right to protection against discrimination, insult and degradation.

Free speech is something I'm sure most everyone supports in principle, but in practice things can get complicated, as sections 140 and 266b of Danish law illustrate. Section 266b would seem to protect people from ad hominem attacks based on, for instance, their religion. This seems reasonable so far. However, I couldn't disagree more strongly with section 140. It's one thing to attack a group of people based on their religious beliefs (e.g. "All Christians are infidels and we should kill them") but it's quite another to attack an idea or dogma (e.g. "The Christian religion is a fraud"). As far as I'm concerned, these are fair game. If the ideas or dogma of your religion can't stand up to a little insulting, then perhaps you should look into another one.

Also troubling is this idea of a "lawfully" existing religious community. Who or what determines this status for each religion? Number of practicioners? Time since foundation? Quality of dogma?

I don't find it especially comforting that in prosecution of these laws the right to freedom of speech is "taken into consideration" and that this right must be exercised "with the necessary respect for other human rights, including the right to protection against discrimination, insult and degradation." This sounds like pretty shoddy and half-assed protection of the freedom of speech. The "right" to not suffer insults doesn't strike me as being a very fundamental one, and certainly should never trump the right to free speech.

Anyway, thankfully it was found that the famous cartoons which precipitated the whole foofaraw don't violate either section of the law.