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this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2023
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I agree. You shouldn't be persecuted or harassed regardless of your religious beliefs, you should be equally protected regardless of if you are a Satanist, Wiccan, or whatever.
The actual wording of the law when translated from Swedish is closest to the English word "creed" I think, not "religious belief" as I wrote in my original comment, but I thought religious belief was a smidge clearer. I'm obviously not a native English speaker so I do my best.
And to further adress the "but what if I believe in My Little Pony would that count", I mean... the spirit of the law does matter to the judges, you'd have to make a very strong case as to why you and your three friends should count as a protected "group" and why dismembering My Little Pony figurines is necessarily incitement against your group. I'm 99% sure no prosecutor would take you seriously. But I don't know, I am not a legal practitioner. It's up to the prosecutors to decide if a case seems to have merit, and then it's up to the court to try what should and shouldn't count as incitement under the law.
That's the issue. You now have a very vague law that is entirely up to interpretation by the judge on a case to case basis. Three people might not a religion make, but what about 300? 3000? Those numbers are easy to reach if you have any sort of decent organiser behind a cause. It's just extremely open to abuse. There is no reason why religions should be granted any sort of protected status under the law.
Sure, that's technically an issue, but not something that will probably ever become an issue in practice. Prosecutors who get a police report on their table evaluate the merit of the case and choose whether to dismiss it or prosecute it. So while this law could be abused because of a fuzzy definition of "creed"... It would have to be a very elaborate scheme where you'd have to fool both the public and the police that your case is within the spirit of the law, a prosecutor, and then finally a judge and five jurors (Sweden doesn't have a jury system with regular citizens), for extremely little gain? Swedish courts tend to be conservative with punishments and fines. Just wildly guessing here, but a normal fine amount for this type of crime could probably range from $500 to $5000, and this is not awarded to the defendant. There can be damages awarded as well, though damages are generally very unimpressive in Sweden and of similar amounts to fines. There are other problems with the wording of this law that I think are more egregious, I'm not under any illusion that it's a perfect law even though I agree with the sentiment and spirit.
The full law run through Google Translate:
Remember that, while the translation is actually very accurate imo, there are words that have a slightly different nuance in Swedish, and some words here that exist in Swedish but don't have a full equivalent in English. "National group" isn't very correct here as a translation of folkgrupp, and "creed" is an ok but not 100% translation of trosuppfattning. "Contempt" is close, but the nuance is a bit different in the original missaktning.
Some other issues: What is a "message"? What does "expresses contempt" mean here, what constitutes expressing contempt? Is a Quran burning a message, or does the context of the Quran burnings imply a message in this case? Where is the line drawn for "expressing contempt"?
Courts are very protective of the Swedish constitutional right to free speech, which is why the recent Quran burnings are characterized by many legal experts as legal and valid religious critique. But others instead argue that the main intent here was not to critique religion, it was to incite, provoke and disrespect.
It's a fuzzy line to walk, but there is a pretty high bar for sentencing something as incitement under the cited law, when it stands in opposition to the constitutional right to free speech.