A German man exercized a basic right provided in the German constitution -- a right to call for resistance to the governing elite -- and a right with clear similarites to the American Second Amendment -- and he got prosecuted over it.
Because he was clearly within his rights, however, the verdict against him was simply based on the fact that he had criticized Muslims, which runs against German law prohibiting "incitement to hatred and insult and defamation of a group of people"
Now Germany has its own version of Geert Wilders in the Netherlands and Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff in Austria - Michael Mannheimer has undergone legal prosecution for making statements about Islam displeasing to Muslims and their politically correct allies.
Mannheimer ran afoul of German authorities after he issued a "Call to General Resistance of the German People according to Article 20, paragraph 4 of the Basic Law
Mannheimer's internet declaration of resistance earned him a criminal conviction and a fine of 50 Euros for 50 days (2,500 Euros) from a court in the southern German town of Heilbronn in the state of Baden- Würtemburg.
In Mannheimer's defense, though, he referenced violence merely as an ultima ratio according to the traditional understanding of Article 20(4) and its underlying political philosophy. Moreover, it was not incitement to violence, but Section 130's provisions on incitement to hatred and insult and defamation of a group of people (i.e. Muslims) that formed the basis of Mannheimer's conviction.
Michael Mannheimer's case is bad news for free speech in Germany and, along with increasingly frequent similar cases, places in like legal danger others like Nonie Darwish and Ibn Warraq.
Following on the prosecution of Elisabeth Sabbaditsch-Wolf, Mannheimer's case shows that not just politicians such as Wilders, but also private citizens will be subject to legal sanction provided that they become too prominent in their criticism and condemnation of Islam.
Their loss, in turn, will be the loss of societies at large robbed of the opportunity to learn about Islam from all perspectives, an issue of immense global importance today.
Source
5 comments:
They need to round up and deport all islamic radicals in the fatherland
We are seeing Western governments getting stronger, (as in the U.S.) while their people are getting weaker. In fact, in a free society, it should be the other way around.
Arab spring? It's obviously time for a Western Spring.
I think you've gotten the American First and Second Amendments confused. The first deals with free speech and the second deals with our right to keep and bear arms.
Germany just round in circles with the reasons it has for forbidding free-speech.
I thought Nazism and its relatives were verboten in Germany? Apparently they've forgotten that Muslims were Hitler's closest ideological ally.
Post a Comment