European countries are broadening hate-speech laws and reviving blasphemy laws in response to speech that is viewed as anti-Muslim or xenophobic. As a think-tank explains:
Last week, Salwan Momika, an Iraqi immigrant to Sweden was murdered because he burned Qurans to show his opposition to Islam. His murderers remain at large, though the Swedish government said that the killing could be connected to a foreign power, similar to how author Salman Rushdie has been frequently targeted by Iran for his 1988 novel The Satanic Verses and was almost killed in 2022.
And yet, liberal, modern Sweden and the likely fundamentalist murderer or foreign actor were aligned in their belief that Mr. Momika and his expression were a problem and violence was needed to stop him. He was murdered shortly before he was set to be convicted by the Swedish state for his Quran-burning “hate crimes.” Mr. Momika’s fellow activist Salwan Najem was convicted days after Momika’s murder for his burning of Qurans and hateful statements, with the Swedish courts saying their actions “by a wide margin” had gone beyond acceptable religious criticism.
Sweden got rid of its laws against blasphemy in the 20th century. But significant unrest in Scandinavia over the past few years has led to governments rolling back their protections for free speech to criticize religions, even with book burnings. Last year, Denmark fully capitulated, reestablishing formal blasphemy laws on its books. Sweden is instead expanding the use of its other hate speech laws to effectively act as blasphemy laws that prevent criticism of religious ideas, books, or other materials.
While Sweden’s punishments are certainly less severe than other blasphemy laws around the world, they are still using the force of the state to compel and punish speech that some find offensive.
And it’s not alone. Facing various incidents of unrest of its own, the UK has increasingly resorted to censorship. The UK is prosecuting a man, Martin Frost, for hate speech after burning the Quran in solidarity with the murdered Momika after his daughter was killed in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Despite England having repealed its blasphemy laws in 2008, the judge found that “The Koran is a sacred book to Muslims, and treating it as you did is going to cause extreme distress. This is a tolerant country, but we just do not tolerate this behaviour.”
Europe may restrict the speech of Americans as well. In 2023, European enacted the Digital Services Act (DSA), which could end up limiting Americans’ speech online, according to the Daily Caller. It requires “very large online platforms” (VLOPs) to increase content moderation by cracking down on “disinformation” and other supposedly harmful content, among numerous other provisions. Truthful information is sometimes mistakenly labeled as “disinformation.” Large tech companies’ compliance with the law could drastically increase censorship in the U.S. , not just Europe, as the DSA incentivizes platforms to implement the moderation worldwide, experts said. “The DSA is just the latest example of the European Union targeting American tech companies with burdensome regulations that seek to export a more censorious content moderation regime around the globe,” said James Czerniawski, senior policy analyst at Americans for Prosperity.
Europe also restricts access to information about people’s pasts on the Internet, such as crimes they committed or court judgments against them. In America, you can’t invoke a “right to be forgotten” to suppress other people’s speech on newsworthy (or even not-so-newsworthy) topics, as court rulings like Gates v. Discovery Communications (2004) make clear. There is no general “privacy exception” to the First Amendment. Unfortunately, it’s a different story in Europe, where a lawyer used it to suppress information about him, in a decision issued by Europe’s highest court. As Kevin Drum noted in Mother Jones, “The European Court of Justice…ruled that Google can be required to delete links to public records even when the records themselves are allowed to remain active,” such as in past news articles about a court judgment against someone for not paying their bills.
