Blasphemy

Group defamation and incitement in the Netherlands: The conviction of Geert Wilders

Tom Herrenberg* | PhD candidate and lecturer at Leiden Law School | Co-editor of The Fall and Rise of Blasphemy Law (Leiden University Press, 2016) (together with Paul Cliteur) 1. Introduction “Do you want more or less European Union?! … Do you want more or less Partij van de Arbeid (the Dutch center-left Labor Party, added)?! … And thirdly, although actually I’m not allowed to say this … Do you want, in this city and in the Netherlands, more or fewer Moroccans?!” These were the three questions Geert Wilders, the leader of the popular Dutch right-wing Partij voor de Vrijheid […]

Disposing of Relics: Overt and Covert Blasphemy Statutes in Europe

Joanna Diane Caytas J.D. Candidate, Columbia Law School, 2017 Introduction The murderous rampages at Charlie Hebdo in Paris in January 2015, in Copenhagen in February 2015, and all across Paris on November 13, 2015 not only shocked the world’s conscience but also resurfaced a controversy over blasphemy laws that, prior to the advent of fundamentalist religious terrorism, had been thought a relic of a bygone era. These rampages also sparked discussions concerning the existence of a common European identity of values, secular humanism as a minimum constitutional denominator, and the difference between attacking people and ideas. Islamic groups are the […]