CORRECTION: It is not true that 'from now on, insulting Prophet Muhammad will lead to prison'

(Patria) - The Patria News Agency on February 23, 2021, published an article titled 'CRIMINAL OFFENSE European Court ruled: From now on, insulting Prophet Muhammad will lead to prison'. In it, according to the analysis by the portal 'Raskrinkavanje.ba', UNTRUE INFORMATION was presented that the European Court of Human Rights ruled on Thursday that insulting the Prophet of Islam Muhammad will be a criminal offense and will not be considered 'freedom of expression'. The TRUE INFORMATION is that there is no ruling from February 2021 regarding the insult of Prophet Muhammad. We apologize to our readers for the inaccurate information.

The portal 'Raskrinkavanje.ba' assessed the article as 'fake news', given that the European Court of Human Rights did not issue any 'ruling that insulting Prophet Muhammad will be a criminal offense and will not be considered freedom of expression' nor that 'from now on, insulting Prophet Muhammad will lead to prison', as stated in the Facebook status of Sefadil Ličina, and subsequently on various portals.

Read the full analysis from the portal 'Raskrinkavanje.ba' below:

Facebook posts, and later articles in several media outlets, have claimed that the European Court of Human Rights has issued a ruling according to which insulting Prophet Muhammad will be a criminal offense. This is an incorrect interpretation of the actual ruling of this court from 2018.

On February 22, 2021, Sefadil Ličina's Facebook profile published a status claiming that the European Court of Human Rights 'ruled on Thursday that insulting Prophet Muhammad will be a criminal offense':

As of the publication of this analysis, the status has received 231 interactions with 31 comments, and has been shared 376 times.

In addition to private user profiles on this social network, the status was also published by the Facebook pages Istina dobrote and ABH Islamic Society Dzemat Smithfield, as well as the Facebook profile Džemaat Novi Bar.

Besides the mentioned statuses, a screenshot with identical claims was shared on Facebook on the following pages: Moje šher Tuzi, Ja volim islam, Bošnjaci, Džemat Duga Poljana, and SPP Duga Poljana.

The claims from the Facebook user Sefadil Ličina's status were also featured in several media reports. For example, on February 23, 2021, the Patria News Agency published an article titled CRIMINAL OFFENSE European Court ruled: From now on, insulting Prophet Muhammad will lead to prison.

A search of keywords in English shows that there is no ruling from February 2021 regarding the insult of Prophet Muhammad. A review of the official website of the European Court of Human Rights, which contains all decisions of this court, also confirms the absence of such a recent ruling.

Therefore, it is not true that this court made any decision related to this topic 'on Thursday'.

The claim that the ECHR allegedly 'ruled on Thursday that insulting Prophet Muhammad can lead to prison' was circulating on social media in English in November 2020, which was analyzed in detail by The Quint in an article published on November 13, 2020.

It was concluded that these posts originated from an article by the portal Milli Chronicle from 2018. The article from this portal contained the same claim that appeared in the English-language posts in November 2020, as well as in our language in February 2021 – that the 'European Court of Human Rights ruled on Thursday that insulting Prophet Muhammad will be a criminal offense for which one can end up in prison'.

The Milli Chronicle portal stated that the court was 'forced to make a ruling after an Austrian woman insulted the prophet at two different seminars'.

The Milli Chronicle article actually refers to a decision of the European Court of Human Rights, which on October 25, 2018, ruled in a case where an Austrian citizen, E.S., sued her country before this court. She had previously been convicted in Austria for disrespecting religious doctrines and sued her country before the European Court of Human Rights, claiming that the sentence she received violated her right to freedom of expression.

E.S. was convicted in Austria after it was established that, during two seminars held in 2008, she called Prophet Muhammad a 'pedophile'.

She did not wish to accept the verdict, believing that her statements fell under freedom of speech, protected by Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Freedoms of Speech, and therefore sued the Republic of Austria.

The appeal was submitted to the ECHR in 2015 with the intention of E.S. proving that Austria had violated her right to free expression by fining her for statements made at the seminars. The ECHR ultimately rejected this appeal in 2018, stating that in this case, there was no violation of the right to freedom of expression, and that the Austrian court had acted correctly.

Information about the verdict stated that the applicant was guaranteed anonymity. It was revealed that the person was born in 1971, lives in Vienna, and in 2008 held several seminars at the right-wing Freedom Party Education Institute. One of these seminars was attended by a journalist from a media outlet, whose reporting initiated an investigation by the Austrian authorities into the statements made at the seminars. The case resulted in a verdict in Austria in 2011, according to which E.S. was sentenced to a fine of 480 euros (939 KM). According to The Quint, if the convicted person did not pay the fine, it would 'result in a 60-day prison sentence'.

She was ordered to pay court costs and a daily fine of four euros for 120 days (totaling 480 euros), which, if not paid, would result in a 60-day prison sentence (...)
The court found her guilty of publicly disparaging religious doctrines, specifically Muhammad, the prophet of Islam – in a manner that could cause justified indignation (geeignet, berechtigtes Ärgernis zu erregen).

The ECHR, in explaining the decision to reject this appeal, stated in paragraphs 57 and 58 that the right to freedom of expression was not violated in this case and that the Austrian court had acted correctly.

(...) 57. In conclusion, the Court considers that in this case the domestic courts have comprehensively assessed the broader context of the applicant's statements and carefully balanced her right to freedom of expression with the rights of others to protection of their religious feelings and the preservation of religious peace in Austrian society. The domestic courts discussed the permissible limits of criticism of religious doctrines versus their disparagement and found that the applicant's statements were likely to cause justified indignation among Muslims. Furthermore, the Court considers that the impugned statements were not formulated in a neutral manner with the aim of making an objective contribution to the public debate on child marriage (unlike Aydın Tatlav and Giniewski, both cited above), but rather represent a generalization without establishing the facts. Thus, considering that they exceeded the permissible limits of objective debate and classifying them as a violent attack on the Prophet of Islam, which could incite prejudice and jeopardize religious peace, the domestic courts concluded that the disputed facts contained elements of incitement to religious intolerance. The Court accepts that they provided relevant and sufficient reasons and finds that the interference with the applicant's rights under Article 10 was indeed necessary to address an urgent social need and was proportionate to the legitimate aim pursued.
58. Therefore, the Court considers that the domestic courts did not exceed their wide margin of appreciation in this case when convicting the applicant for disparaging religious doctrines. Accordingly, there has been no violation of Article 10 of the Convention.

FOR THESE REASONS, THE COURT UNANIMOUSLY,

Declares the application admissible;
Holds that there has been no violation of Article 10 of the Convention.

Therefore, the ECHR did not issue any 'ruling that insulting Prophet Muhammad will be a criminal offense and will not be considered freedom of expression' nor that 'from now on, insulting Prophet Muhammad will lead to prison', as stated in the Facebook status of Sefadil Ličina, and subsequently on various portals.

Claims phrased in this way lead to the conclusion that some kind of change in legal regulation has been adopted or a binding decision has been made according to which any future insult will be a criminal offense leading to prison, which is not true.

The ECHR did, in 2018, make a decision to reject the appeal of an Austrian citizen against her country, and in the same decision confirmed the previous verdict of local courts in Austria, according to which she was convicted for inciting religious hatred. The ECHR determined that there was no violation of the right to freedom of expression, as the Austrian citizen claimed.

The ECHR cannot issue rulings that become valid anywhere, as suggested in the analyzed posts, but rather acts on specific cases – in this case, on the appeal of an Austrian citizen.

The portal Milli Chronicle, from which this disinformation originated back in 2018, accurately conveyed information regarding this specific verdict and even included a quote from the actual ruling. However, alongside this, it also published untrue claims that were also found in Sefadil Ličina's Facebook status, and subsequently on portals. In our language area, however, no reporting has presented accurate and specific information about the case of the Austrian citizen from the Milli Chronicle article.

Furthermore, in the posts in our language, it was only stated that 'from now on, insulting Prophet Muhammad will lead to prison'.

In the original article, although the same claim appeared in the title, it was clearly stated that the fine in this specific case was 480 euros, and only the non-payment of the fine could result in a 60-day prison sentence. Based on the search, it was not possible to determine whether the convicted person paid the fine or ended up in prison for non-payment. However, in any case, it is not true that the court said that 'insulting Prophet Muhammad in Europe can lead to prison'.

We assess the claim from Sefadil Ličina's Facebook status, and subsequently from the Patria portal, that the European Court of Human Rights issued a 'ruling that insulting Allah's Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, will be a criminal offense', or that the same court said that 'insulting Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, in Europe can lead you to prison', as fake news. We assess all subsequent publications of this claim as the dissemination of fake news.

We assess the claim that the judicial panel 'on Thursday' made a decision that 'defaming or humiliating the Prophet, peace be upon him, goes beyond the scope of objective debate and could cause prejudice in society and jeopardize religious peace' as manipulation of facts, given that information almost three years old is presented as current, and that the information about the context and the actual subject of the court's decision in the mentioned ruling has been omitted in the posts and articles.

(Elma Murić, Mladen Lakić, Raskrinkavanje.ba)