Religious Satire, Moral Restraint and the Charlie Hebdo Cartoons

Abstract

In Otto-Preminger, the European Court of Human Rights (EctHR) upheld the decision of the Innsbruck Provincial Court in Austria ordering forfeiture of a film portraying Catholicism in a satirical form in a community where the vast majority of the population were Roman Catholics because the Austrian authorities had acted to ensure religious peace in the region as well as to prevent an unwarranted and offensive attack on their religion. The majority of the EctHR considered its function to be that of balancing the two conflicting rights of free expression and religious freedom. This article argues that it is in the minority dissenting judgment of the three judges, in which the right to both free expression and religious freedom stands best to be protected in the future. This is because free expression is not an untrammeled right but carries within its exercise an obligation of “moral restraint” on which the three minority judges based their dissenting opinions. A quarter of a century after that decision, and with cases such as the Charlie Hebdo Murders in France, it is timely to consider whether the minority opinions carry the seeds of wisdom for the future.