Alleged Austrian Justice

Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff was convicted last February on a “hate speech” charge in a Vienna courtroom. She has appealed her conviction, and the verdict will be announced in court on December 20th.

In commenting on Elisabeth’s appeal, the prosecutor referred to Mohammed’s “alleged consummation of the marriage with the nine year-old wife.”

Alleged?

As if there were any historical accounts controverting the assertion that Mohammed had sexual intercourse with a nine-year-old girl.

As if there were any sources considered authoritative by Muslims that say otherwise.

The historical facts (or should we follow standard Austrian judicial practice, and put “facts” in scare quotes?) confirm exactly what Elisabeth said: Mohammed had sex with his wife Aisha when she was nine years old. Authoritative scriptural passages cited by Sunni and Shi’a Islam are in complete agreement with this statement.

Yet this is still not a “fact”, not in the way that Austrian “justice” understands facts. In two separate cases the Austrian judicial system has now put words into Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff’s mouth, words which she never spoke. The court then accepted those words as her own, and used them against her in its proceedings.

The first instance occurred during the criminal case against Elisabeth, in which she was convicted of “denigration of religious beliefs of a legally recognized religion” for what she said about Mohammed. According to the judge, Elisabeth said Mohammed was a “pedophile”. Yet she never used that word to describe him; she referred to his relationship with Aisha as evidence that he “had a thing for little girls.” The judge who heard her case waved this distinction away, and ruled that what Elisabeth said was the same as using the word “pedophile” in her description.

Because of this word she never uttered, she was convicted in a court of law, and her case is now on appeal to Austria’s highest court.

A parallel use of imaginary wording occurred during a separate case. Reporting on her trial, an Austrian newspaper wrote that Elisabeth had said “Euro-Islam is just s***” (“Der Euro-Islam ist einfach nur scheiße”). Elisabeth had never said anything of the kind, and her legal counsel advised her to sue for defamation.

Last week the judge ruled against Elisabeth’s lawsuit. Like her trial judge, he said it didn’t really matter whether she had made the statement or not, because her sentiments amounted to the same thing.

Among the main points of the verdict were these:

• The defendant depicts Islam in an extremely negative light.
  
  
• Objective examples of “denigration of a religion” may be seen in what she said:
  
  

  —		“Faithful Muslims must follow Mohammed’s example”, “He was a warlord, a womanizer, a pedophile”. These clearly suggest that these characteristics would also be accurate for all devout Muslims.
  —		Devout Muslims are also asked by their religion to kill and lie, to sexually abuse children.
  —		The holy book of Islam, the Koran, is “evil”.
  —		Devout Muslim women go to the opera only if they get lost.
  —		Wearers of the hijab and a burqa should not be seen in the streets (the defendant sees the hijab as not as a cultural but a religious symbol).

  
  
• Not only did the defendant claim in a bad mixture of resentment and half-knowledge that Muslims kill because of their religion, and that Islam is a totalitarian subordination of the individual to the collective, similar to National Socialism and Stalinism, but she also went so far as to say that Muslims sexually abuse children because of their religion. That this is absurd; needs no further explanation.
  
  
• Mentioning this in her seminars, especially to prove her contention that Mohammed was a pedophile because according to Muslim sources he married a six-year-old and consummated the marriage when she was nine, can be seen as a good argument for her Islamophobic attitude as a result of her pseudo-religious scientific interpretation.
  
  
• She is trying to portray this as her right to freedom of speech. However, she was unable to explain coherently why — if founders of religions in their own religions are venerated — her claims can be deduced that Muslims for religious reasons sexually abuse children. The lack of evidence was expected.

Not content with simply brushing aside the fact that Elisabeth never made the offensive statement reported in the media, the judge decided to psychoanalyze her from the bench. This is what passes for “justice” in Modern Multicultural Austria.


Last weekend the Austrian columnist Andreas Unterberger had a few things to say about Elisabeth’s case. Many thanks to JLH for the translation:

All the Things That Judges and Prosecutors Don’t Know

by Andreas Unterberger

November 5, 2011

More and more often we are confronted by actions of the Austrian prosecutor’s office — especially the troops of the BSA [Association of Social-Democratic Academics], active in the Vienna and Graz districts — that scare us to death. Are we living, at least, in the remnants of a country of laws? This worry is compounded by the fact that domestic justice is obviously controlled by people whose education is worse than spotty.

A dramatic example of this is the case against Elisabeth-Sabaditsch Wolff, which is now entering its second trial. It is about the “crime” that the Islam expert and former collaborator of Alois Mock called — at an FPÖ seminar — the sexual congress of the Prophet Mohammed with a nine-year-old girl “pedophilia.” Sabaditsch-Wolff was convicted because of that in the first trial. And the chief prosecutor’s office of Vienna has the time for a pages-long defense of this scandalous verdict. (Yes, this is the same prosecutor’s office that never took the time to systematically follow up the suspicion of many experts that there were still more perpetrators in the Kampusch case — that is, one of the worst cases of child abuse in Austria.)

In commenting on the appeal, there is sharp language about the “alleged consummation of the marriage with the nine year-old wife.” Which is scandalous in more ways than one. What normal human being who repudiates child abuse as one of the worst crimes calls a nine-year-old girl (who was “married” at age six) simply “wife”? Second, this consummation is only “alleged” for the prosecutor, but for the Islamic world, it is still today an example with legal implications. So we read literally in the (doubtless left-leaning) Wikipedia under the keyword “child-marriage”: “The minimum age for girls to marry according to the provisions of Islamic schools of law is nine years. The schools of law orient on Mohammed’s marriage to Aisha, which is said to have been consummated when Aisha was nine years old.” Moreover, the prosecutor does not try at all to argue against the indicated age, which has been confirmed by all available sources. Like a tabloid, the prosecutor consistently says “alleged.”

Of course, there are no film records of the sexual intercourse between Mohammed and that girl. But the fact that this — and above all, the traditionally handed down age of the “bride” — still serves Islamic lawmakers as a model is certainly far more serious than the exact date. Especially, when it is a question of analyzing Islam.

It is still more unbelievable that the prosecutor defends the judge’s statement that child marriages were also widespread in the ruling houses of Europe. And for that reason, entering into child marriages is not the same as pedophilia.

It leaves you open-mouthed. In the first place, those historic child marriages were for purely dynastic reasons — not sexual (bad enough, but quite different from pedophiliac motives). They were intended to secure the power of two ruling houses. Thee is no such consideration in the Mohammed-Aisha “marriage.”

Second, it is not known about any of these child marriages when they were consummated. Which is hard to visualize in the case of an eight year-old boy. And in Aisha’s case, the criticism is directed more at the time of the consummation and less at the time of the “wedding,” which took place in her sixth year.

Third, in these dynastic child marriages in European history, both partners were children. An enormous distinction from the age difference between the 53 year-old Mohammed and the nine year-old Aisha.

Fourth, most of these child marriages were administratively arranged. The children who were entered into marriage by their parents did not see each other before or at the “wedding,” but years later (if at all). Mostly only ambassadors of the ruling houses were present at the marriage agreement.

Considering the state of the teaching of history, this all may be unknown to judges, and “chief” and “primary” state’s attorneys. They are therefore that much more obligated to become acquainted with the facts, before writing such abstruse reasons into verdicts and replies to appeals.

The prosecutors’ battle against Sabaditsch-Wolff is that much more astonishing when countless quite aggressive and totally fact-free instances of mockery of the Christian religion have played out with no legal complications. When necessary, the “freedom of art” was used as a shield.

Astounding, too, is the parallel verdict of a media judge against the woman: She had been accused by a left-leaning glossy magazine, which maintained that Sabaditsch-Wolff had said: “Euro-Islam is just [crap].” The judge had to admit in the verdict that this sentence was never spoken. Nonetheless, he exculpated the magazine in a scurrilous, meandering argument, by referring to the legally invalid verdict and because Sabaditsch-Wolff had spoken negatively about Islam. So leftist opinion terrorism has gone so far in the justice system that you cannot even defend yourself when words that have never been spoken are put into your mouth.

These accusations and verdicts are only imaginable when there is a political witch-hunt against everything that is right of center (in other words, against more than half of the population) and if someone wants to come to the aid of the politically slanted campaign of a glossy magazine supported by tax-paid ads. On the other hand, it would be absolutely inconceivable in a free constitutional state where freedom of expression and scientific facts are still valid.

For previous posts on the “hate speech” prosecution of Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, see Elisabeth’s Voice: The Archives.