European Court of Human Rights upholds blasphemy law: Defaming the Prophet Muhammad or his marriage to a six year old girl hurts people’s “religious feelings”

'Science is a differential equation. Religion is a boundary condition.' - Alan Turing

Make of it what you will but the decision of the ECHR is butthurt. Oh, Europe.

European Court of Human Rights upholds blasphemy law: Defaming the Prophet Muhammad or his marriage to a six year old girl hurts people’s “religious feelings”

This isn’t even Islamophobia: it’s criticism of religion, and most likely criticism of an Islamic practice of marrying and raping young girls. Shame on Austria, and on the European Court of Human Rights. There is no reason for the modern Western democracies to have blasphemy laws. Let’s face it, in Austraia there is no real “freedom of expression”—not if you can’t criticize religion.

Grüß Gott im Himmel!

Spot on!

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CASE OF E.S. v. AUSTRIA

(Application no. 38450/12)

JUDGMENT of 25 October 2018

English translation:

“I./ 1. One of the biggest problems we are facing today is that Muhammad is seen as the ideal man, the perfect human, the perfect Muslim. That means that the highest commandment for a male Muslim is to imitate Muhammad, to live his life. This does not happen according to our social standards and laws. Because he was a warlord, he had many women, to put it like this, and liked to do it with children. And according to our standards he was not a perfect human. We have huge problems with that today, that Muslims get into conflict with democracy and our value system ...

2. The most important of all Hadith collections recognised by all legal schools: The most important is the Sahih Al-Bukhari. If a Hadith was quoted after Bukhari, one can be sure that all Muslims will recognise it. And, unfortunately, in Al-Bukhari the thing with Aisha and child sex is written...

II./ I remember my sister, I have said this several times already, when [S.W.] made her famous statement in Graz, my sister called me and asked: “For God’s sake. Did you tell [S.W.] that?” To which I answered: “No, it wasn’t me, but you can look it up, it’s not really a secret.” And her: “You can’t say it like that!” And me: “A 56-year-old and a six-year-old? What do you call that? Give me an example? What do we call it, if it is not paedophilia?” Her: “Well, one has to paraphrase it, say it in a more diplomatic way.” My sister is symptomatic. We have heard that so many times. “Those were different times” – it wasn’t okay back then, and it’s not okay today. Full stop. And it is still happening today. One can never approve something like that. They all create their own reality, because the truth is so cruel ...”

German original:

“I./1. Eines der großen Probleme, die wir heute haben, ist dass Mohammed als der ideale Mann, der perfekte Mensch, der perfekte Muslim gesehen wird. Das heißt, das oberste Gebot für einen männlichen Moslem ist es, Mohammed nachzumachen, sein Leben zu leben. Das läuft nicht nach unseren sozialen Standards und Gesetzen ab. Weil er war ein Kriegsherr, hatte einen relativ großen Frauenverschleiß, um das jetzt einmal so auszudrücken, hatte nun mal gerne mit Kindern ein bisschen was. Und er war nach unseren Begriffen kein perfekter Mensch. Damit haben wir heute riesige Probleme, weil Muslime mit der Demokratie und unserem Wertesystem in Konflikt geraten...

2. Die wichtigsten von allen Rechtsschulen anerkannten Hadith-Sammlungen: Die allerwichtigste ist die Sahih Al-Bukhari. Wenn eine Hadith nach Bukhari zitiert wurde, dann können Sie sicher sein, dass es alle Muslime anerkennen. Und in der Al-Bukhari ist auch blöderweise das geschrieben mit der Aisha und dem Kindersex...

II./ Ich erinnere mich an meine Schwester, das hab ich schon ein paar Mal erzählt, als [S.W.] in Graz ihren berühmten Sager gemacht hat, ruft mich meine Schwester an und sagt: "Um Gottes willen. Hast du ihr das gesagt?" Worauf ich gesagt habe: "Nein, ich war’s nicht, aber es ist nachzulesen, es ist nicht wirklich ein Geheimnis. " Und sie: "Das kann man doch so nicht sagen." Und ich : "Ein 56-Jähriger und eine 6-Jährige ? Wie nennst du das? Gib mir ein Beispiel? Wie nennen wir das, wenn’s nicht Pädophilie ist?" Sie: "Na ja, das muss man ein bisschen umschreiben, diplomatischer sagen." Meine Schwester ist symptomatisch. Das haben wir schon so oft gehört. "Das waren doch andere Zeiten" – das war damals nicht o.k., und es ist heute nicht o.k. Punkt. Und es passiert heute auch noch. So was ist nie gutzuheißen. Sie legen sich alle eine Wirklichkeit zurecht, weil die Wahrheit so grausam ist...“

14. The Regional Court found that the above statements essentially conveyed the message that Muhammad had had paedophilic tendencies. It stated that the applicant was referring to a marriage which Muhammad had concluded with Aisha, a six-year old, and consummated when she had been nine. The court found that by making the statements the applicant had suggested that Muhammad was not a worthy subject of worship. However, it also found that it could not be established that the applicant had intended to decry all Muslims. She was not suggesting that all Muslims were paedophiles, but was criticising the unreflecting imitation of a role model. According to the court, the common definition of paedophilia was a primary sexual interest in children who had not yet reached puberty. Because paedophilia was behaviour which was ostracised by society and outlawed, it was evident that the applicant’s statements were capable of causing indignation. The court concluded that the applicant had intended to wrongfully accuse Muhammad of having paedophilic tendencies. Even though criticising child marriages was justifiable, she had accused a subject of religious worship of having a primary sexual interest in children’s bodies, which she had deduced from his marriage with a child, disregarding the notion that the marriage had continued until the Prophet’s death, when Aisha had already turned eighteen and had therefore passed the age of puberty. In addition, the court found that because of the public nature of the seminars, which had not been limited to members of the Freedom Party, it was conceivable that at least some of the participants might have been disturbed by the statements.

15. The Regional Court further stated that anyone who wished to exercise their rights under Article 10 of the Convention was subject to duties and responsibilities, such as refraining from making statements which hurt others without reason and therefore did not contribute to a debate of public interest. A balancing exercise between the rights under Article 9 on the one hand and those under Article 10 on the other needed to be carried out. The court considered that the applicant’s statements were not statements of fact, but derogatory value judgments which exceeded the permissible limits. It held that the applicant had not intended to approach the topic in an objective manner, but had directly aimed to degrade Muhammad. The court stated that child marriages were not the same as paedophilia, and were not only a phenomenon of Islam, but also used to be widespread among the European ruling dynasties. Furthermore, the court argued that freedom of religion as protected by Article 9 of the Convention was one of the foundations of a democratic society. Those who invoked their freedom of religion could not expect to be exempt from criticism, and even had to accept the negation of their beliefs. However, the manner in which religious views were attacked could invoke the State’s responsibility in order to guarantee the peaceful exercise of the rights under Article 9. Presenting objects of religious worship in a provocative way capable of hurting the feelings of the followers of that religion could be conceived as a malicious violation of the spirit of tolerance, which was one of the bases of a democratic society. The court concluded that the interference with the applicant’s freedom of expression in the form of a criminal conviction had been justified as it had been based in law and had been necessary in a democratic society, namely in order to protect religious peace in Austria.

55. As to the applicant’s argument that a few individual statements had to be tolerated during a lively discussion, the Court considers that it is not compatible with Article 10 of the Convention to pack incriminating statements into the wrapping of an otherwise acceptable expression of opinion and deduce that this would render the statements exceeding the permissible limits of freedom of expression passable. Moreover, the applicant was wrong to assume that improper attacks on religious groups had to be tolerated even if they were based on untrue facts (see paragraph 35 above). On the contrary, the Court has held that statements which are based on (manifestly) untrue facts do not enjoy the protection of Article 10 (see, mutatis mutandis, Giniewski, § 52, cited above, and Medžlis Islamske Zajednice Brčko and Others v. Bosnia and Herzegovina [GC], no 17224/11, § 117, ECHR 2017).

56. Lastly, the Court reiterates that the applicant was ordered to pay a moderate fine of only EUR 480 in total for the three statements made, although the Criminal Code alternatively would have provided for up to six months’ imprisonment. Furthermore, the fine imposed was on the lower end of the statutory range of punishment of up to 360 day-fines, namely only 120 day-fines, and the domestic courts applied only the minimum day‑fine of EUR 4. Though the applicant had no previous criminal record and this was taken into account as a mitigating factor, her repeated infringement had to be considered as an aggravating factor. Under the circumstances, the Court does not consider the criminal sanction as disproportionate.

57. The Court, in conclusion, finds that in the instant case the domestic courts comprehensively assessed the wider context of the applicant’s statements, and carefully balanced her right to freedom of expression with the rights of others to have their religious feelings protected, and to have religious peace preserved in Austrian society. They discussed the permissible limits of criticism of religious doctrines versus their disparagement, and found that the applicant’s statements had been likely to arouse justified indignation in Muslims. In addition, the Court considers that the impugned statements were not phrased in a neutral manner aimed at being an objective contribution to a public debate concerning child marriages (contrast Aydın Tatlav and Giniewski, both cited above), but amounted to a generalisation without factual basis. Thus, by considering them as going beyond the permissible limits of an objective debate and classifying them as an abusive attack on the Prophet of Islam, which was capable of stirring up prejudice and putting at risk religious peace, the domestic courts came to the conclusion that the facts at issue contained elements of incitement to religious intolerance. The Court accepts that they thereby put forward relevant and sufficient reasons and finds that the interference with the applicant’s rights under Article 10 indeed corresponded to a pressing social need and was proportionate to the legitimate aim pursued.

58. Therefore, the Court considers that the domestic courts did not overstep their – wide – margin of appreciation in the instant case when convicting the applicant of disparaging religious doctrines. 

Accordingly, there has been no violation of Article 10 of the Convention.

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Back in 2016 in Good ol Germany the

Quirky church, Flying Spaghetti Monster, hits court wall

Brother Spaghettus had a bad day on Wednesday. A court in the eastern city of Frankfurt an der Oder announced that his religion, the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, had no right to hang official signs at the entrances to the town of Templin, Brandenburg, giving information about their weekly services, next to those of the local Catholic and Protestant churches.

"The suit has been denied," Judge Sabine Selbig said in court. "It does not depend on whether the organization is a world-view community or not."

Let's keep the discussion alive:

1. Was Muhammad a Pedophile?

2. The truth about Muhammad and Aisha

3. The Prophet Mohammed was a paedophile, says Kilroy-Silk aide

4. Why I Doubt The Prophet Muhammad was a Paedophile - A Catholic Defends Islam

5. Woman’s conviction in Austria for calling the Prophet Mohammed a paedophile did not breach her right to free speech, European Court of Human Rights rules - read the comments

6. Ukip leader Gerard Batten calls Muhammad a paedophile at Tommy Robinson rally

7. European Court: Woman's Defamation of Muhammad Doesn't Count as Free Expression
Her statements may have been offensive. But that doesn't mean she shouldn't have a right to make them. - RRRIGHT!

8. Carl Sagan Quotes That Reveal His Thoughts on Religion
What the famous skeptic had to say about God

There is one thing certain. When the fucking EU finally crumbles I will get deliberately drunk beyond recognition and just loving it.

Here is a different Aisha

Reading Lounge

1. Architectural eye candy

2. Former CIA Chief Explains How Spies Use Disguises

3. When Apple introduced the iPod in 2001, they pioneered a new kind of physical listening experience and changed music forever.

4. Universities: Is free speech under threat?

5. Signaling, Shame, and Silence in Social Learning

Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person

“Marry, and you will regret it; don’t marry, you will also regret it; marry or don’t marry, you will regret it either way. Laugh at the world’s foolishness, you will regret it; weep over it, you will regret that too; laugh at the world’s foolishness or weep over it, you will regret both. Believe a woman, you will regret it; believe her not, you will also regret it… Hang yourself, you will regret it; do not hang yourself, and you will regret that too; hang yourself or don’t hang yourself, you’ll regret it either way; whether you hang yourself or do not hang yourself, you will regret both. This, gentlemen, is the essence of all philosophy.”

Søren Kierkegaard

A Japanese ad

Via Althouse

Reading Lounge

1. Has eaten at more than 7,300 Chinese restaurants, but can’t use chopsticks and doesn’t care for food

2. This trash company called "Grabb-It" is parking running cars with video ads in the window facing the sidewalk

3. Instagram and poetry

4. Geometric Sculptures Give the Boston Seaport a Colorful Makeover

5. Norwegian hero Roenneberg who blew up Nazi plant dies at 99

6. Hayao Miyazaki’s Cursed Worlds

Alleviating Global Poverty through Labor Mobility

Lant Pritchett starts off boldly: "I am going to start with a simple but striking claim, defend that claim, and then circle back to the broader questions the title raises. My simple claim is that as any citizen of the West contemplates the question “What could we do to alleviate global poverty?” the right answer is: “The least you can do is better than the best you can do.”

Alleviating Global Poverty: Labor Mobility, Direct Assistance, and Economic Growth

Turns out giving cash is not that economical.

Abstract

Decades of programmatic experimentation by development NGOs combined with the latest empirical techniques for estimating program impact have shown that a well-designed, well- implemented, multi-faceted intervention can in fact have an apparently sustained impact on the incomes of the poor (Banerjee et al 2015). The magnitude of the income gains of the “best you can do” via direct interventions to raise the income of the poor in situ is about 40 times smaller than the income gain from allowing people from those same poor countries to work in a high productivity country like the USA. Simply allowing more labor mobility holds vastly more promise for reducing poverty than anything else on the development agenda. That said, the magnitude of the gains from large growth accelerations (and losses from large decelerations) are also many-fold larger than the potential gains from directed individual interventions and the poverty reduction gains from large, extended periods of rapid growth are larger than from targeted interventions and also hold promise (and have delivered) for reducing global poverty.

Compare that to the EU's position on migration:

Angela Merkel in Nigeria: Migration in focus at end of Africa trip

"The leaders of Europe and Africa's largest economies have met for talks in Abuja. Promoting economic measures to stem migration has been a priority during the German chancellor's trip to western African countries."

That was a face-saving trip for her. The EU's measures do not sound wise and make little sense economically.

"So think of two ways to help the global poor. One is for rich people (in a global sense) to give a dollar and get roughly a dollar’s worth of benefits for the poor. The other people is for rich people to allow people who would like to work at the prevailing wage of their country to do so and not deploy active coercion to prevent this—which reflects the person’s contribution to product and hence is (or can be made to be) zero net cost to the host country. Of course, a dollar for a poor person could produce vastly more human well-being than had the richer person spent the money as the marginal utility was much, much higher for the poor person, but this redistribution effect is the same for both options. This means, at least in current conditions, the least you can do—just increasing the freedom of people who want to work and people who want those people to work to carry out that mutually beneficially transaction across national borders—is better than the best you can do of trying to directly help people in poverty but without allowing them to move to opportunity."

Here is what drives people and how they gained.

"Empirically, their own initiative is how most people report escaping poverty. As part of a massive exercise of participatory assessment of how people’s well being had changed over a 10 year period we held village meetings in 14 countries and three states of India (Narayan, Pritchett, Kapor 2009). In a ranking exercise people ranked the level of living of households today and their level 10 years ago. This identified almost 4000 people who, by their village neighbor’s assessments, had moved out of poverty. We then interviewed them and asked them what they thought the primary reason for their move out of poverty was. This is of course subject to all the subjectivity biases about how people narrate the story of their lives but 87.7 percent of them reported their own initiative (60.1 percent an initiative outside of agriculture, 17.4 percent in agriculture, 4.7 percent accumulation of assets, and 5.5 percent hard work). Only .3 percent (12 people of 3,991) who moved out of poverty named NGO assistance as the cause."

Conclusion

A large part of the explanation of differences in labor productivity across countries is differences in “A”—total factor productivity. Transmitting A from country to country has proven difficult. This implies that labor with the exact same intrinsic productivity will have much higher productivity (and hence justify a higher wage) in a high A than in a low A country. But, by and large, rich countries have passed extraordinarily strict regulations on the movement of unskilled labor. A relaxation of these restrictions could produce the largest single gains in global poverty of any available policy, program or project action. And since these gains to movers are (mostly) due to higher A which (at the margin) is a “public good” (it is non-rival and non-excludable) in the host country these gains are essentially free to the host country (or could be free to the host country under some technical design conditions).

One thought for addressing the injustice of condition of birth based discrimination that keeps people in low productivity places is to imagine that rich country citizens will carry out philanthropic activities that raise the incomes of the global poor in situ. But the fact they are in low productivity places means it will be costly to raise their income in those places. Extrapolating from the fact that a “best in class” anti-poverty program produced, on average across 5 countries, $344 in annual gains in income for the poor with $4,545 in costs, to produce the annual gains of allowing a low skill worker to work in the USA of $17,115 would require an investment of $226,000 per person—versus producing those same gains essentially for free by relaxing barriers to mobility. The “best you can do” in situ is much less effective than the “least you can do” of letting people work and get paid a wage that reflects the value of their work.

That said, sustained rapid economic growth in developing countries—that is sustained by improvements in A—can also produce cumulatively enormous gains. And avoiding growth collapses/stagnation can prevent enormous losses. So, even though traditional measures of the country to country transfers of resources via “foreign aid” do not, in and of themselves, appear to be responsible for producing most of the observed differences in economic growth, investments that could bring that about more sustained growth (both more sustained accelerations and fewer sharp and extended decelerations) could also have astronomical returns. And, to be clear, no reason why more labor mobility and sustained economic growth cannot go hand in hand in improving well-being.

Wise thoughts, however, implemented in Germany it would make the AfD the strongest political party in a very short time.

Shocking revelation: Women using luxury goods seem to lose all restraint towards candy

There are two papers on the social costs of using luxury goods. Think of Prada or Louis Vuitton handbags, or if you have lost all taste MCM. Aargh!

The Dark Side of Luxury: Social Costs of Luxury Consumption

Abstract

Extant research demonstrates that luxury goods are beneficial signals that bestow upon individuals social benefits that range from positive evaluations to compliance. In contrast to this perspective, the current work explores the idea that luxury goods can carry significant negative social costs for actors. Across four experiments, the social cost of luxury is examined. Although individuals who display luxury goods are ascribed higher status, they can pay a hefty tax when it comes to warmth. The social costs of luxury consumption appear to be driven by impression management concerns rather than envy. Consequently, whether the consumption of luxury goods yields positive or negative social consequences for an actor critically depends both on whether status or warmth is relevant for a decision and observers’ own lay beliefs about luxury consumption. Overall, this work reveals the more complex psychology of individuals’ interpretation and response to actors’ use of luxury goods.

Unfortunately, the paper is gated but there is a paper from 2015.

The Dark Side Of Luxury Consumption: Psychological And Social Consequences Of Using Luxury Goods

Women using luxury goods seem to lose all restraint towards candy.

In order to test my prediction, I have completed four experiments. As before, women used a luxury or non-luxury product. After using the product, the participants then completed tasks designed to assess their ability to exert self-control when a snack of candy was made available to them. Looking at the amount of candy consumed, I found results supportive of my prediction. For example:

Study 1 & 2: Women who carried a luxury handbag were less able to resist candy and ate more of it than women who carried a non-luxury handbag, and this difference was due to feelings of being in a spotlight. Also, the effects of carrying a luxury handbag on food consumption were stronger for women who generally struggle with self-control. 

Studies 3 & 4: These studies ruled out several alternative explanations for the observed effects. Increases in food consumption for luxury users were not driven by changes in feelings of power, status, positive mood, negative mood, or how much the participants liked the handbag.

Results of this study provide additional support for our contention that luxury users’ feelings of being in a spotlight are responsible for self-regulatory depletion, indicated by a lessened ability to resist tasty but unhealthy food.

Women using luxury goods impose social costs on other(s) (women). Who knew, after all, that's why they use makeup.

Finally, we show that luxury goods have an impact that goes beyond the luxury user alone. Whereas prior work on luxury consumption has examined well-being from the standpoint of the consumer, we show that luxury consumption has negative consequences for the well-being of others because the selfish behaviors triggered by luxury usage in our studies impose costs on others. Such behaviors, which can be viewed as the societal costs of luxury consumption, are not only unexpected but are also unwelcome consequences of luxury usage.

Women using luxury goods show greater altruism like giving to charity or other forms of donations. However, only when it is visible in the public. Bitches!

I found that most of the time self-interested behavior manifested as selfish behavior, such as women taking more money for themselves and donating less money to charity in private. However, I found that self-interested behavior manifested as generous behavior when the situation explicitly afforded people an opportunity to enhance their reputation by acting generously. For example, I found that wearing luxury products led women to donate more money to charity when donations were made in public in front of other people. Note that the types of selfish and generous behavior assessed across six studies all constitute self-interested behavior. Both selfish and generous behavior benefitted the person by either enabling them to acquire more resources or by enabling them to gain a boost in reputation. Indeed, both selfish and generous behaviors were triggered by an increased sense of social status that resulted from consuming luxury goods.

The dissertation is well worth reading.