Charlie Hebdo goes on a crusade for freedom of expression. While the Danish government presented to Parliament on Friday 1er September, a bill to prohibit the public degradation of religious objects, the satirical and secular weekly criticizes the choice made by Copenhagen to reinstate the offense of blasphemy. The subject will be the “one” of the edition of Wednesday, September 6.
The newspaper thus calls for “alert citizens attached to democratic values” alongside eight Scandinavian media. Among them, seven Norwegian newspapers or online sites and a Danish media criticize the return of this 334-year-old provision, which was repealed in 2017.
In recent months, the controversies have been linked in northern Europe around Iraqi political refugees who have multiplied the burnings of Korans in front of the press. As for the Scandinavian extreme right, it exults in front of other similar degradations carried out in its ranks. The emotion that swept through the Muslim world in front of these images of burning led in particular, on July 20, to the attack of a hundred people against the Swedish embassy in Baghdad.
“A scandalous law”
In this context of heightened tensions, the Danish Minister of Justice, Peter Hummelgaard, defended a law aimed at “prohibit the inappropriate treatment of objects of significant religious significance to a religious community”. Anyone who publicly desecrates a Bible, Torah, Koran or religious symbols like a crucifix will soon face a fine or up to two years in prison.
For the writing of Charlie Hebdodecimated by an Islamist attack on January 7, 2015, this “law of circumstances” is worrying. “It is serious that a European country decides to restore this medieval crime”warns the director of the publication, Riss, who sees in it a regression fraught with meaning, all the more symbolically important since Denmark had been the scene of the affair of the caricatures of Muhammad in 2005.
By doing so, the Danish government bows under pressure from Muslim countries, believes the weekly’s editor-in-chief, Gérard Biard. “With this scandalous law, the Danish government has its laws dictated by dictatorial regimes such as Iran, Saudi Arabia and the Taliban’s Afghanistan”he insists. “The vagueness around this bill, which in reality only concerns the Koran, leaves the door open to all interpretations and therefore to all censorship”he also fears, even if the Danish Minister of Justice assures that the law will not cover caricatures.
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