Anyone who remembers the stance taken by the Danish government during the row over the Mohammed cartoons will think of that country as a leader in the fight for free speech. That was in 2006. Denmark now has a different government, and we live in times when free speech is increasingly under threat, and so this news comes as less of a surprise than it should.
The Danish government said on Friday it was proposing legislation that would make it illegal to burn copies of the Koran in public places, part of the Nordic country’s effort to de-escalate tensions with Muslim countries.
Denmark and Sweden have seen a string of protests in public in recent weeks where copies of the Koran have been burned or otherwise damaged, prompting outrage in Muslim nations which have demanded the Nordic governments put a stop to the burnings.
“The government will propose legislation that prohibits the inappropriate handling of objects with essential religious significance for a religious community,” Justice Minister Peter Hummelgaard told a press conference.
“The proposal will thus make it punishable to, for example, in public burn a Koran, Bible or Torah,” he said.
The government rejected protests by some Danish opposition parties that said banning Koran burnings would infringe on free speech.
“I fundamentally believe there are more civilised ways to express one’s views than burning things,” Hummelgaard said.
Well, Mr. Hummelgaard, I agree that there are “more civilized ways to express one’s views” than publicly burning books that some consider to be “of essential religious significance.” It’s not something that I would do myself.
But the fact that legal protests — as that’s what these burnings are — offend some religious believers ought not, in a, well, civilized, country be a reason to ban them. In societies that truly respect free speech, there should be no “religious exception” to that principle. To accept, in effect, that there is, and that someone’s religious sensibilities trump someone else’s ability to express, even if impolitely, a contrary view is to make a nonsense of the notion of free expression.
The slow (or not so slow in countries such as Britain) return to new variants on old blasphemy laws throughout Europe is a disgrace. And that in Denmark’s (and, soon, it seems, in Sweden’s) case, it is motivated by worries over how such protests are received in Muslim countries, only adds to the shamefulness of the proposed law. Denmark is a proud country with a strong sense of its sovereignty. Or it used to be. To restrict free speech at home because of worries about the response abroad is an act of surrender.
Perhaps it is time to redesign the Dannebrog. Removing the red might make for a more appropriate color scheme for Denmark’s flag.