Danish government will introduce new law to ban burning the Quran

Blasphemy laws being expanded in 2023. Not what I think people would have predicted in, say, 1990.

Governments should not be allowed to burn books.

Private citizens should be allowed to burn any books they own.

Neither governments nor private citizens should be allowed to harm or threaten people who burn their own damn books.

Example: you can purchase a dozen copies of "On The Origin of Species", burn them, and I will very happily not threaten to behead you. Easy.

“The bill will make it punishable, for example, to burn the Quran or the Bible in public. It will only aim at actions in a public place or with the intention of spreading in a wider circle,” Hummelgaard said

Hummelgaard told a news conference that the recent protests were “senseless taunts that have no other purpose than to create discord and hatred.”

I agree with Hummelgaard. Those "protests" are used to create hatred. Even though it is also for me not comprehensible how people can be so sensitive about this, we all know the reaction it provokes. And even though we don't agree and comprehend those feelings, we can still respect those feelings and just not senselessly create disruption. And hey.... You can still burn as many Qurans in your private oven as you want.
- The intent is secondary to the effect. If certain muslim people cannot put their religious sensibilities BELOW the secular human rights of their fellow country men, they LITERALLY need to leave. They are literally bad for us, and our social, secular order. EXACTLY like the hardcore christians are bad for human rights in the USA.
- “The bill will make it punishable, for example, for people of the same sex to kiss in public. It will only aim at actions in a public place or with the intention of spreading in a wider circle,” Hummelgaard said
  
  I agree with Hummelgaard. Those “protests” are used to create hatred. Even though it is also for me not comprehensible how people can be so sensitive about this, we all know the reaction it provokes. And even though we don’t agree and comprehend those feelings, we can still respect those feelings and just not senselessly create disruption. And hey… You can still kiss as many people of the same sex in private as you want.
  
  This isn't an exaggeration: a few weeks ago in Ottawa we had anti-LGBT protests where rainbow flags were burned down -- guess who was there? And while many of us were offended and appalled, nobody was threatened or beheaded in response, and we didn't have politicians trying to pass a new law forbidding the burning of rainbow flags either.
  
  The whole point of this is that in Europe we have fought for centuries in order to establish liberal democracies where freedom of speech and the separation of church and state are enshrined. We must not appease extremists who achieve change with threats of violence. There is a name for that.
  
  In a democracy the act of burning a book, or a flag, is a canary in the coal mine: you know there is trouble when it dies.
  
  The message is simple: we don't threaten people who have different ideas.
- We can not have a modern society where people feel strongly about religion. And there is really no point in appeasement of fundamentalists - they don't want a compromise they allays want it all.
I personally really do not like religion. And if you buy a quran and burn it at home, nothing will happen. Nobody will care.

But what is your desired outcome, if you take the book that is holy to some, and burn it infront of their eyes? There is only one answer to this and that answer is the reason for these laws. You cannot go to a pride parade and burn rainbow flags in front of their eyes either. It is rather obvious why.
- You cannot go to a pride parade and burn rainbow flags in front of their eyes either. It is rather obvious why.
  
  What are you talking about? This is pretty much what happened in Ottawa a few weeks ago, so there is no need to hypothesize. What happened to them? Nothing at all.
  
  Queer folks don't behead Muslims. Queer folks do not stone Muslims.

While I'm sure most people doing this are just irl trolls looking for outrage rather than making any deeper political point, the return of blasphemy laws to Europe after we spent so long removing them and lowering religions influcance seems like a backwards step.

He added that there must “be room for religious criticism” and that there were no plans to reintroducing a blasphemy clause that was repealed in 2017.

But you knew that, because you read the article you commented on, right?
- They can say what they want, but when they're adding special protections for one piece of literature as it's a religious one, that's what they're already doing.
- It's a law that protects religious books in a way non-religious books aren't, just because it offends religious people. I don't understand how that's not a blasphemy law, Book Edition.
- O superior one, we thank thee for thy presence

Soooooo, did Danish government just announce that they will fold and accept any demand if enough people, not necessarily even living in Denmark, make threats of terrorism and murder? Because it kinda sounds like they did...

Woder if it would also work for, I don't know, universal basic income, 3-day weekends or lower taxes?

3-day weekends? What are the 3 days left after the one-day workweek?
- Apologizing and/or being afraid
Did you even read the article?
They did it to curb carbon emissions... So many sacred books burned recently by people who can't/won't even read them. They could at least burn the thing AND plant a tree

Kinda unsettles me a bit. To be clear, I don't want violence. But I also don't think that burning an object should be punishable. And that goes for stuff like my country flag, my pride flag, my bible. People should have the freedom of expression, even if their expression is a bad take or a waste of paper and nylon.

I just wish everyone could be more chill. Half the people need to quit being assholes, and the other half need to take 12 seconds to calm down and not freak out over something small. We have much bigger things to freak out about that we should be (constructively) freaking out about, like the collapse of entire food chains due to overfishing.

Fuck religion. Time and time again eroding our rights. Shame on the Danish government who is bending down to violence and superstition.

I don't think that applies here. Why would you ever burn a Quran IN PUBLIC? If you are not religious, or subscribe to other religions, why would you even own a quran? Quran burning in public has only one purpose, to provoke hate. Same as burning flags in public. Or hating certain groups of people in public. None of it is allowed or ok to do.

If you burn that thing at home or throw it in the trash, nobody will care. Otherwise it just falls into the "incite violence" category of things, because that is exactly the thing you are doing.

If moslems then go into a rage and be violent themselves, that isn't ok either, that should be clear.
- You should be allowed to display your beliefs in public, regardless of how enraged they might make others. You shouldn't be allowed to make direct threats, but anything else should be fair game.
Democracy means letting people with other world views exist in peace.

Please consider how you want to be treated by this world and how you can make your own positive impact on humans around you.

I am an atheist myself and will vehemently defend secularism but your comment boils down to hate and demanding others have the exact same beliefs as you do.
- You cannot honestly say you support both secularism and this law at the same time. Either you do, or you dont.
  
  And this law does exactly what you said: impose a belief upon others

How about banning public book burning in general? Not a lot of good memories related to that.

Want to keep burning books? Have waste collection services provide a pickup point. Then they can do it in some industrial incinerator so you'll have your book burned but without providing media with an easy outrage (unless you wanted outrage?).

Book burning seems to be a tool of right wing extremism, even when it's used against right wing extremists of some other kind, there's very little benefit to the society.

Also obligatory, fuck organized religion.

I've seen left wing people burn books too. Most notably Harry Potter books in the last few years.

Obviously there's a philosophical question about whether the Quaran should have more protections as a "holy book", but it's something that runs the gamut these days.
- I don't believe critique of JK Rowling is left wing extremism although book burning as a form of consumer boycott seems to be rather counterproductive.
- are Potterheads a persecuted minority that face violence up to systematic murder in Europe? I dont think so. Meanwhile muslim people or people being deemed as muslims or "brown" are subject to extensive discrimination, hatred and violence.
I would just ban burning things in general. Seems like a fire hazard.

Sending clear message that violence is an acceptable and working political tool. Climate protesters need to up their game.

They should, violence absolutely works. It's just that no one knows what it'll cost until it's all over, and there's no way to know until it's done. Using violence is going all in, and only a fool thinks they can never lose.

There seems to be deep misunderstanding why this is troublesome.

The Government burning any book is bad.

A private citizen should be allowed to burn any book he/she wants.

You can still burn the Quran at home according to the law.
- Thats a very thin defence. The point is that private citizens should be allowed to burn their own belongings as a form of protest/expression. That's effectively been banned now.
- You just can't do it as a form of protest, which should be protected under free speech
So, a citizen should be allowed to set the books on fire inside a public library?
A private citizen will still be allowed and protected to burn any book he or she wishes, in private.
- Like you can be gay in muslim country, just in private.

It's an exceptionally bad idea to get the state involved in picking which interpretations of a religion are going to be defended.

Cyprus pretty much has this kind of law, and the Chruch loves tormenting even dissenting Christian theologians or prominent people of faith who disagree with the Church with it, let alone critics who aren't part of the religion at all.

Full title: "Danish government to put forward law making burning Quran and other religious texts illegal "

How about no?

Fucking Assholes, Apologists and Democracy Enemies.

Fuck that and them.

it has to be passed in a democratically elected parlament. It may not get passed.

it is an extension of an existing law that forbid burning of flags (except the Danish flag Dannebrog)

book burnings are for morons

fuck you
- (except the Danish flag Dannebrog)
  
  So burning the national flag is allowed?
- There’s a difference between burning books because you want to eliminate what they contain, and burning the holy text of the religion you suffered under. I think it’s bad for people who weren’t raised under oppression justified by Islam to burn the Quran, but the person who started all this was an immigrant from Iraq. To some people the Quran is a symbol of peace love and their deeply held beliefs. I’ve known wonderful and liberated women who wore hijab. But to others it’s a symbol of brutal oppression, like the Iranian atheist lesbian I once met. The fact is that this situation is far more morally complicated than many equivalents would be.
- fuck you
  
  fuck you
  
  fuck you
  
  fuck you
  
  burning the fucking Quoran is the right way to dispose of it according to itself
  
  a democratically elected government can do undemocratic things (and they often do)
  
  the existing law is idiotic
Well said and agreed

Anybody who publicly mocks or insults the religious doctrine or worship of any religious community lawfully existing in this country will be punished by fine or imprisonment for up to 4 months

So Denmark got this Blashemy Law off of the books in 2017, and they're ready to bring it back.

Denmark over here negotiating with terrorists.

Negotiating? I'm thinking more of a word that rhymes with "urrender".
Or defending a religious minority depending which way you look at it.
- Yes, bending down to the unreasonable demands of a particularly problematic religious minority.
- A religious minority that hates other religious minorities/genders/sexual preferences
- Religious minority? Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world, is currently neck and neck with Christianity, and is predicted to account for 70% of all religious people in the world - by far - in the next couple of decades. Minority? Pssh!

Wow, giving in to the threats of people from another side of the planet. Plus don't they really have any idea what it says about non-Muslim people? Especially women? And of course children!?

Can they still draw Mohammed though?

This is the best summary I could come up with:

This comes after a string of public desecrations of the Quran by a handful of anti-Islam activists sparked angry demonstrations in Muslim countries.

It will only aim at actions in a public place or with the intention of spreading in a wider circle,” Hummelgaard said, adding that it would be punishable by fines or up to two years in prison.

Hummelgaard told a news conference that the recent protests were “senseless taunts that have no other purpose than to create discord and hatred.”

Denmark’s government has repeatedly distanced itself from the desecrations, but has insisted that freedom of expression is one of the most important values in Danish society.

Last month, he said the government would seek to legally prevent burnings of the Quran or other religious scriptures, saying it “only serves the purpose of creating division in a world that actually needs unity.”

The three parties in the governing coalition control 88 seats and are also supported by the four lawmakers representing the semi-independent Danish territories of Greenland and the Faeroe Islands.

The original article contains 355 words, the summary contains 173 words. Saved 51%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Sooo... other countries burning flags of other nations in public is okay, but this is not?

Even if this has whataboutism-character and I appreciate the take of "making it better, even if others don't", I can't deny there is some irony to that.

iirc burning flags of other nations is also not ok
- And yet such non-EU countries don't deliver consequences.
No, burning other countries flags is prohibited in denmark, burning the danish flag is ok
- I've explicitly excluded denmark.
  
  other countries burning flags of other nations in public
Sooo... other countries burning flags of other nations in public is okay, but this is not?

According to Danes, yeah seems like it. They don't seem particularly bothered by those other countries burning their flag.

Can the Danish government ban books thats are against homosexuality?

Hmpf. In my opinion this is not as great a threat to atheism as it may seem. As far as I understand it is still allowed to defame Islamic text in other ways e.g. by shredding or exposure to extreme kinetic forces.

I wanted to say that this is a hot take but it seems a lot of people in this comment section agree, It doesn't matter what kind of book it is. Destroying books is and should very much be a big no no.

I feel bad every time I have to throw out a book. Because it's not only a Symbol of wisdom and knowledge, it is also a testament to a world view, a thought process and identity.

Burning books is the very antithesis of what we consider a modern Society. It directly attacks fundamental rights, if only Symbolically. The right to think freely, to have a different opinion, the pursuit of knowledge to better ourselves and our Surroundings in pursuit of these world views.

To quote Heinrich Heine: "dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen" (Where one begins by burning books, one will end up burning people. )

PS: In search of the correct Quote I stumbled upon this quote by Arnold Zweig: "Wer Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt auch Bibliotheken, bombardiert offene Städte, schießt mit Ferngeschützen oder Fliegerbomben Gotteshäuser ein. Die Drohung, mit der die Fackel in den Bücherstapel fliegt, gilt nicht dem Juden Freud, Marx oder Einstein, sie gilt der europäischen Kultur, sie gilt den Werten, die die Menschheit mühsam hervorgebracht und die der Barbar anhaßt, weil er halt barbarisch ist, unterlegen, roh, infantil"

Roughly translated: "Whoever burns books also burns libraries, bombs open cities, shoots down places of worship with long-range guns or aerial bombs. The threat with which the torch flies into the pile of books is not aimed at the Jew Freud, Marx or Einstein, it is aimed at European culture, it is aimed at the values that humanity has laboriously created and which the barbarian hates because he is just barbaric, inferior, raw, infantile"

It depends on intent, context and scale.

Burning books to eradicate their content is bad, yes.

Burning a book which you just made yourself is completely harmless. Or single, mass-produced copies.

Some Muslims will take offense when you destroy a hard drive on which you copied the Quran.

This has nothing to do with the book burnings done by the Nazis. Their intent, context and scale was all about eradicating the books' content.

Or if you want, the totalitarians this time are those who play victim. They seek to oppose their value system and rules onto others, if necessary by deadly force. You better obey Islamic rule and respect the Quran as holy, or else.
- Can you delete the Quran from the HDD once it is copied there, or is that blasphemy too? What about moving it from one HDD to another? Is that allowed? Or must it always leave behind a copy, like a virus?
- yes it has very much to do with the book burnings of the Nazis.
  
  If one person is murdered in a hate crime it is not less of a hate crime because it lacked the scale.
  
  The intent and the targeted escalation is the same. Also it is no coincidence that there is a islamic terrorist group called Boko Haram - books are sin. It is the same idea and the same motivitation and it is always outside of democratic discourse, where criticism of a religion or its institutions is of course permitted. But burning books is not motivated to be part of the democratic discourse, but to harm democracy.
It’s just a fucking book. In todays day and age a printed book means shit. Burn as many as you want. You wouldn’t change anything.
- is this the same for flags?

For those people who do not understand why this law was made it is because not that long ago in Denmark a crazy man burned the Quran which resulted in a lot of havoc which resulted in hundreds of cars that were either burned or destroyed so for something like that to not happen again they banned burning religious things

Or they could arrest the criminals that rioted...

Isn't this the government that hates non-white immigrants that's now bending to non-whites abroad? What's going on?

Governments consist of different people, different branches of government have different average views, someones views on immigration are not necessarily indicative of their views on hate speech and muslims do actually live in denmark

I think it’s a good idea. No one gets anything from publicly burning a book other than maybe demonstrate some kind of opinion?

And it’s a good and easy way to prevent terrorists bombing themselves into heaven in some danish city.

Of course there’s nothing wrong with burning the quran but if it helps to reduce terrorism I am all for it.

Isn't this just surrendering to terrorism? Isn't it bad that forms of free speech get banned because others threatens to kill?
- Yes, let alone how capitulating emboldens them. These politicians should've been shoved in to more lockers in high school, because giving in to a bully just gets you more bully attention.
- Yes if it’s about the principle then you’re absolutely right we’re surrendering. But in practice I think this is more like a hostage negotiation. If someone threatens to kill someone because it doesn’t go their way you don’t just ignore them, you try to negotiate with them, comprise and find a solution. I think that’s exactly what the government does here and what anyone should be doing.
It is never a good idea for a government to bend to the will of terrorists. They'll just perpetrate more terrorism next time they want something changed for their benefit. Let's be clear, by rioting after a Quran was burned, and then demanding legislative changes, they participated in terrorism.