After meeting Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff last month in Washington D.C., Andrew Harrod has written an article about her FrontPage Mag. Some excerpts are below:
The self-proclaimed Austrian “anti-jihad” and “anti-sharia activist” Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff appeared on June 21, 2013 at the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, DC, at an event co-sponsored by the Center for Security Policy (CSP) and the Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET). In introducing the event, CSP’s Christine Brim called people like Sabaditsch-Wolff the “defenders of freedom” in a “struggle…to preserve free speech” and “equality under the law.” Sabaditsch-Wolff’s subsequent presentation of her courageous struggles in no way belied Brim’s introduction.
Sabaditsch-Wolff discussed her own well-publicized ordeals and subsequent activism stemming from criticizing Islam, a faith described by her as a “religion of peace” that “is not really peaceful to those who speak the truth.” Daughter of a diplomat, she had already developed reservations about Islam during her childhood stay in Iran right before the 1978-1979 revolution. During her diplomatic tenure, postings to Kuwait encompassing the 1990 Iraq invasion and to Libya where she saw her landlord on September 11, 2001, blame the Jews for Al-Qaeda’s terrorist attacks that day only increased these concerns.
The controversy surrounding Sabaditsch-Wolff began with her comments before an October 2009 Vienna seminar of the rightwing Austrian Freedom Party (Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs or FPÖ). Discussing canonical accounts of Islam’s mid-50s prophet Muhammad consummating a marriage with a nine-year old Aisha, Sabaditsch-Wolff asked “what do you call” this “if not pedophilia?” Subsequently, Sabaditsch-Wolff received hate speech charges under Section 283 of the Austrian Criminal Code.
The trial found insufficient evidence for the Section 283 charge. Yet the judge’s initiative brought a Section 188 charge against the denigration of recognized religions, resulting in a 480 Euro fine on February 15, 2011, later upheld. Thus Sabaditsch-Wolff concluded that under Europe’s various speech restrictions “you may not call a spade a spade” with respect to Islam.
This ordeal made Sabaditsch-Wolff devote herself to opposing Islamic totalitarianism, with her main “playground” the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). This 1975-founded non-treaty organization “many people have never heard of” contains 57 states, including the United States and Canada, formulating various legally non-binding agreements in the areas of security, economics, and human rights. Here Sabaditsch-Wolff focuses on the OSCE’s Human Dimension covering human rights, in particular the Warsaw-based Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR).
Sabaditsch-Wolff described the OSCE as a “significant source” for developing hate speech laws in OSCE countries and the world. Thus Sabaditsch-Wolff proclaimed that “we don’t want to forfeit this game” at ODIHR against “Islamists” and “far left institutions…directly opposed to free speech.” To suppress criticism of Islam, these groups condemn “Islamophobia,” a “term not legally defined.”
Speaking of her own experience, Sabaditsch-Wolff declared, “How dare someone accuse me of a concept that does not exist?”
Read the rest at FrontPage Mag.
For previous posts on the “hate speech” prosecution of Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, see Elisabeth’s Voice: The Archives.
As one of her friends noted at the time, attempting to make an example of Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff by trying and punishing her has turned out to be one the the major blunders of the leftist-Islamist alliance in Austria. From an honest citizen attempting to educate others about what she had learned about Islam both through experience and through study, she has been transformed into an international opponent of Islamization and leftist repression. Jackboots are not made for tap-dancing.
What’s the difference?
Well, one main difference is that Mohammed has a billion or so followers, some of whom successfully practice polygamy and state-sanctioned pedophilia.
IOW, Mohammed got away with it and then some.
And of course none of the reporters who described a prophet in his fifties, with multiple wives, with a sexual interest in grown-ups, who also took advantage of under-age girls, as a ‘paedophile’ were ever arrested for hate speech. Funny that, eh …
This 1975-founded non-treaty organization “many people have never heard of” contains 57 states, including the United States and Canada…
Obama, during one or more campaign stops in his first election, said there were 57 states in the US and he would be visiting them all. His detractors (the GOP opponent NOT being one) made fun of this ‘slip’. Hmmm…perhaps he was trying to tell us something after all.
I still say that the reason for not allowing criticism of Islam, is because of the UK intervention when we had a Labour Government. So:-
In November 2008, the then Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the then Business Secretary Lord Mandelson, went to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States to ask them to fund our shaky economies, by putting billions into the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Lord Mandelson acknowledged they offered the Saudis some financial influence over Britain and the West.
This is of course a move to Eurabia – allowing Islam to take over Europe.
Which reminds me of this:-
God’s story made a great beginning
But man went and spoiled it by sinning
I hope that this story will end in God’s glory
But at the moment the other sides winning.
Mandelson, Straw, Hodge don’t like the English. Blair is out for himself.
However Thatcher didn’t really like her own people very much either. Malcolm Rifkind, Leon Brittan, Nigel Lawson, Saatchi and Saatchi… They obliterated the English working class. The current predicament is a result of a hostile elite seizing power post war and really turning the screws post 1980. First the Conservatives attacked the working classes, then the Labourites flooded the working class with migrants. It makes me contemplate the possibility that the people who have run the UK simply see it as a farm. The ordinary Brit as cattle.
Yes. All that fawning over the late Maggie Thatcher recently was enough to make working class men and women puke.
We know what she did to our country.
As for ‘New Labour’ they should all be banged up in Craigies, life without parole.