Danish Man Who Burned Quran Is Prosecuted for Blasphemy

>>119586
The video was posted on Dec. 27, 2015, to a Facebook group called “Yes to Freedom — No to Islam.” Above the video, shared 415 times, were the words: “Consider your neighbor, it stinks when it burns.” One commenter wrote: “If I had the Quran I’d also burn it, that’s the only thing it’s good for. Gives a bit of heat.”

The man’s Facebook page was full of messages critical of Islam, refugees and women. In one post, he even wrote, “I hate children.”

The video did not get widespread attention at the time. The defendant — his true name is still not clear and under Danish law cannot be released unless he is convicted — was charged last year with hate speech, but the indictment was later changed to blasphemy, a decision prosecutors announced on Wednesday. A trial has been scheduled for June. If convicted, the defendant faces up to four months in prison or a fine.

His lawyer, Rasmus Paludan, argued that his client had burned the Quran in “self-defense.”

“The Quran contains passages on how Mohammed’s followers must kill the infidel, i.e. the Danes,” he said. “Therefore, it’s an act of self-defense to burn a book that in such a way incites war and violence.”

Mr. Paludan also noted that in 1997, a Danish artist burned a copy of the Bible on a news show by a state broadcaster but was not charged. “Considering that it is legal to burn a Bible in Denmark, I’m surprised then that it would be guilty to burn the Quran,” he said in a phone interview.

Mr. Paludan said his client “loves freedom of expression and loves Denmark.” Speculating on the decision to bring charges, he said, “The fear of Islam and Muslims may be far greater now, and the prosecution service may be a lot more apprehensive of Islam and its followers.”

>>119588
Jan Reckendorff, the regional prosecutor who brought the charge against Mr. Salvesen, said in a statement: “It is the prosecution’s view that circumstances involving the burning of holy books such as the Bible and the Quran can in certain cases be a violation of the blasphemy clause, which covers public scorn or mockery of religion.”

Jacob Mchangama, director of Justitia, a Danish civil liberties group, called the decision to file charges the latest sign of a declining respect for free speech in Europe. “It’s a sad development but one that mirrors developments elsewhere,” he said.

Mr. Mchangama said he thought the prosecutor was motivated by a desire to fend off the threat of terrorist attacks. “Danish authorities are afraid that the Quran burning could spark a new crisis, and if they say that they’ve actually charged this person, this is a way to appease or at least avoid such a crisis,” he said.

Blasphemy laws protect religious dogma from ridicule, and therefore the feelings of believers, Mr. Mchangama argues, while hate speech laws protect religious groups from degrading expressions.

Denmark is one of only five countries in the European Union that has a blasphemy law on the books. Some say the case could lead to a rallying cry to abandon such laws once and for all.

“One might speculate that this is one more straw on the back of the camel, so that more politicians will be in the favor of abolishing the law,” said Per Mouritsen, a professor of political science at Aarhus University. Danes, he said, generally believe that “Muslims should be able to stand up to ridicule as much as Christians would routinely put up with, and that everyone should take a joke.”

Mr. Mouritsen, noting the 1997 decision not to prosecute, asked, “Why should this all of a sudden be an issue, when everybody agrees that the blasphemy law is a thing of the past?”

>>119591
The decision to press charges was condemned by the right-wing, anti-immigration Danish People’s Party, which said it would push to rescind the blasphemy law.

“I’m not going to recommend people burn either Qurans or Bibles, but it’s a waste of public resources to spend time on such things,” Peter Kofod Poulsen, the party’s spokesman for legal affairs, told Ritzau, a Danish news agency. “We have more important things to busy ourselves with in 2017 than to take people to task over burning books.”

But Trine Bramsen, a member of Parliament and a spokeswoman of the Social Democrats, an opposition party, defended the blasphemy law. “I struggle to see how that we’ll achieve a stronger society, or how we’ll enrich the public debate, if the burning of holy books was permitted,” she told Ritzau.

The 2005 cartoon controversy was followed by deadly attacks that have left Western Europe deeply shaken.

In 2010, Kurt Westergaard, who had drawn a cartoon for Jyllands-Posten that showed Muhammad with a bomb in a black turban, narrowly escaped an assassination attempt, fleeing into a safe room at his home in the port city of Aarhus to escape a young Somali armed with an ax and a knife. In 2013, Lars Hedegaard, an outspoken critic of Islam and a defender of Lars Vilks, a Swedish cartoonist who had lampooned Muhammad, was shot at outside his Copenhagen home by a gunman disguised as a postal worker.

In January 2015, 12 people died an assault on the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, which had lampooned Islam. The next month, the police in Copenhagen shot and killed a man after he killed someone outside a synagogue and sprayed bullets into a cafe where Mr. Vilks, the Swedish cartoonist, was speaking.

In Denmark, “the very idea that religion is taken seriously is the antithesis of being a good citizen,” said Mr. Mouritsen, the political scientist. “This is very important.”

This is so fucking backwards, fuck you Denmark, and enjoy your Islamic state religion

>all this fuss over a religion only 4% of the country follows
Really gives the old noggin a floggin doesn't it?

What the fuck is wrong with Yuropoor governments?

>I'm outraged that they stuck up for Islam!!!
cry moar faggots

>>119827
>actually siding with the enforcement of blasphemy laws in a secular civilized society
I know it's full blown overused at this point, but this post you just made is legitimately cuck-mode so hard it's fucking painful.

Islam is a barbaric, piece of shit religion that doesn't need any apologists since its own adherents are big enough retards as it is.

>>119829
It's like you think they will be moving the christian churches to another town the moment the muslims move in.

>>119846
And there it is, like fucking clockwork, the go to Christian this, Christian that when making excuses for Islam.

I don't give a fuck about churches. I care about a secular democracy bending over backwards for a bunch of retarded heathens who chimp out the moment someone even suggests their religion sucks dehydrated and diseased donkey dick.

And you know, maybe you should brush up on your history a little bit, because when Muslims become a large enough population in a certain region the places of worship generally are moved or converted. Stop apologizing for this retarded set of beliefs because the majority of the poor poor adherents aren't white and you have an anti-Western daddy issue complex.

DENMARK, YES!!

>Danish nan be like:
>"Instigator?!"

>>119586
I hope Denmark builds a wall on its borders with Germany.
They don't need one towards Sweden because the Danish constitution tells them straight up to beat up any Swedish person who comes to Denmark with a stick.

>>119619
>>119707
>>119829
...Did you miss the part where the law is over a century old and has mostly been used against people talking shit about Christianity? You can't really go blaming this on ZOMG MUSLIMS just because the law applies to all religions equally.

>>120214
Did you miss the part that said nobody has been convicted of blasphemy in Denmark since 1946? Or the bit that said it hasn't even been invoked since 1971?

>>119857
It's like you think there is only kicking them out of Europe entirely, or ushering them in while giving them flowers and fruit baskets, with no middle ground.

>>119586
Denmark is officially competing with Sweden for the coveted title of "Most Cucked Nation"

Keep trying Dane-chan. I know you can do it.

>>119857
*tips fedora*

>>120216
I never said it was a good law, just that Muslims have jack shit to do with it existing in the first place. You hypocritical /pol/yps made a fucking game of using esoteric laws against random people you didn't like, don't sperg out when the same thing happens to one of you.

>>120225
Shit dude, I'd be pissed if someone was accused of blasphemy regardless of whichever religion they were blaspheming against. Anon already made this point earlier in the thread
>>119857

>>120220

Reddit is this way, faggot.

>>120217
With Islam those are the only choices unless you put a hard limit to how big their population can get and keep it permanently so tiny it doesn't cause any problems. I'm sorry if you think otherwise, and I wish it were so, but it's not. You can't coexist with everyone and Islam has a very long and very consistent track record of proving what I'm saying right.

>>120220
Thank you for admitting I'm right and you have no argument to refute mine.

>>120214
>>120225
No, you're playing the same old fucking whataboutist game all of you Islam apologists play whenever the religion is criticized. You immediately jerk hard to the right and start bitch bitch bitching about Christianity. The moment people start getting prosecuted for blaspheming Nazarene I will join you, but from where I'm sitting the last time that happened was in 194-fucking-6. You're putting Reed Richard's to shame with that desperate attempt of a reach for a mere shadow of a false equivalence.

It's not hypocrisy when the last time a Christfag pulled this shit everyone on this board hadn't been born and neither had their parents. You reaching back that far for your desperate "b-but Christianity!" deflection when there's a religion doing it right here, right now is fucking pathetic.

Again, stop defending barbarism because your anti-Western cultural relativistic daddy issues command it. You are in no position to call anyone a hypocrite given you wouldn't for a moment be deflecting like this to another party removed by decades and decades if it were Christianity pulling this shit now.

How the FUCK can a country, whose most popular rock artist since the 80s is a Satanist, also charge people for blasphemy in the current year
WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING??

>>120524
>Mr. Paludan also noted that in 1997, a Danish artist burned a copy of the Bible on a news show by a state broadcaster but was not charged. “Considering that it is legal to burn a Bible in Denmark, I’m surprised then that it would be guilty to burn the Quran,”

Take a guess

it's hilarious to see western nation comitt cultural suicide haha

>>120535
What I don't understand is the rationale behind something like this. Whenever news of Islamic violence is censored, when the police aren't forthcoming with details, when someone bends over backwards and sideways for Islam when they normally wouldn't for anyone else, or when a massive attack happens, the go to response is to immediately downplay, coddle, and excuse in the hopes of staving off a harsh and violent reaction against Islam.

The people who engage in this pathetic and disgusting practice always say they're doing it to keep people from becoming hateful of Muslims, yet their actions are just making it ten times worse. It's proving that you either have to bend over and take it up the ass from Islam or there will be violent resistance to it. They're proving there is no middle ground by their actions and sewing the seeds of that which they claim to be fighting by accommodating a violent religion whenever it says jump.

Pieces of shit like >>119827 >>119846 >>120214 are as big a recruitment tool for anti-Islamic groups as the violent Muslims themselves, simply because associating with someone so gleeful in aiding their own destruction produces something akin to instinctive disgust.

>>120674
>recruitment tool for anti-Islamic
DROPPED INTO THE TRASH

>>120679
No idea what you mean. Yeah, some progressives say that, but I'm not on their side at all. I want a complete stop to any and all Islamic immigration to any country in Europe or North America. It's becoming obvious doing anything otherwise is just importing a potentially violent parallel society that doesn't integrate or assimilate.

>>120680
You're right I just got triggered

>>120680
>importing a potentially violent parallel society that doesn't integrate
This is unfortunately beginning to really show itself to be the case

Maybe immigration and refugees have been handled badly, but the Muslim population in Europe is already at about 6%, and every decade it's been growing by a percentage point

You can't get away from the awful things that are in the news, but the news is hardly impartial, so it's really hard to get a sense of how deep this problem runs, and how bad it really is

In my mind what is clear is the instability of the Muslim world right now, Muslim countries are worthless shitholes and if you let Muslims have their way they will turn whatever country they are in into another shithole. If they are coming to my country then they need to live as we do here, but many just don't seem to be interested in integration, so they can fuck off

>>120687
>If they are coming to my country then they need to live as we do here

I honestly don't know if even that is going to work anymore. If you allow their numbers to keep growing there will come a point when the hardliners feel comfortable enough to make unreasonable demands on society and moderates in the Muslim world have shown they're fine sitting by while more strict adherents set the rules.

That and even if the first generation is well-behaved, the cultural relativism infesting our society will imbue their children with a massive case of anti-Western resentment. We're already seeing that happen, where most violent attacks in Europe are carried out by the supposedly "Westernized," children of immigrants.

>>120707
immigration needs to stop totally.

Tax incentive to raise birth rates

No more welfare for degenerates. You go to a soup kitchen and a shelter like a regular homeless person. Checks are for people with jobs.

>>120716
>No more welfare for degenerates. You go to a soup kitchen and a shelter like a regular homeless person. Checks are for people with jobs.

I'm OK with that if we can guarantee that they won't be expected to live as invalids. A.k.a. no welfare checks but they've a guarantee of whatever healthcare, shelter, basic necessities, sanitation, utilities, and nutrition requirements are met.

Not just because humanitarianism or something but because not all jobless people are jobless because they're lazy. Many fall on hard times.

>>120790
I'm alright with that, as long as we criminalize having children while in that legal state.

>>119586
>nobosy expects... THE DANISH INQUISITION!!!!!!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WJXHY2OXGE