Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff (born 1971)[1] is an Austrian counter-jihad activist.[2] She was the applicant of the hate speech trial E.S. v. Austria, brought before the European Court of Human Rights.[1] Before she became involved in the counter-jihad movement, she held positions at the Austrian embassies in Kuwait and Libya, and in the Austrian ministry of foreign affairs.[2]

Biography

Background

The daughter of an Austrian diplomat, she says her interest in Islam came after "having been exposed to Islam from early childhood" and being "confronted with life under the Sharia."[2] She has links to the Wiener Akademikerbund and the Freedom Party of Austria, and manages the homepage of the Netzwerk Karl Martell blog.[2] She is featured extensively on the counter-jihad blog Gates of Vienna,[2] and has participated in several of the official international counter-jihad conferences.[3]

Hate speech case

Main article: E.S. v. Austria (2018)

In 2011 she was convicted by a Viennese court for "disparaging religious doctrines" after having described the Muslim Prophet Muhammad as a pedophile.[4][5][6] She appealed the conviction to the European Court of Human Rights, which in 2018 ruled her speech to not be covered by freedom of speech,[2][7][8] although she had made the assertion based on the Islamic texts describing Muhammad's consummation of his marriage with his 9-year-old wife Aisha when he was 54 years old.[9] The remarks had been made in a small non-public seminar for the Freedom Party that was only picked up by an undercover journalist.[9] According to Bruce Bawer, a search for mentions about the case on the internet, described by William Kilpatrick as a "pivotal event in modern European jurisprudence" that "placed the principles of sharia above the right to freedom of expression", failed to find a single mention of the original appeals verdict in any newspaper in the Western world.[10]

Other activities

In 2016 Sabaditsch-Wolff was knighted by the Knights of Malta, a Catholic order.[2] She has been active in the Citizens' Movement Pax Europa, the International Civil Liberties Alliance,[11] ACT for America, and has worked with Katie Hopkins.[2] In this capacity she has been part of a delegation that has worked to "counter Islam" at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).[2] In 2010 she spoke in Israel alongside Geert Wilders at the invitation of former MK Eliezer Cohen,[12] and in 2017 she was invited to meet with Kansas Secretary of State and Trump advisor Kris Kobach.[13] She has been interviewed regarding her legal case by Jeanine Pirro.[14]

In 2019 she published her book The Truth is No Defense a part biography about her legal case. The book included "expert analyses" by Robert Spencer, Clare M. Lopez, Stephen Coughlin, Grégor Puppinck, Christian Zeitz, Henrik R. Clausen, Christine Brim and Aaron Rhodes.[15][16] An updated and revised version of the book, titled Truth Was My Crime: A Life Fighting for Freedom was published in 2023.[17]

References

  1. ^ a b Pokorny, Lukas (2020). Religion in Austria: An Annotated Bibliography of 2020 Scholarship (PDF). University of Vienna. pp. 302, 308.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i "Factsheet: Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff". Bridge Initiative. Georgetown University. 3 June 2019.
  3. ^ Lazaridis, Gabriella; Campani, Giovanna (2016). Understanding the Populist Shift: Othering in a Europe in Crisis. Taylor & Francis. pp. 86–92. ISBN 9781317326069.
  4. ^ "Beraterin der FPÖ droht Haft". OE24 (in German). 20 December 2011.
  5. ^ "Urteil gegen Sabaditsch-Wolff hält: Herabwürdigung religiöser Lehren: OLG bestätigt Urteil erster Instanz". news.at (in German). 20 December 2011.
  6. ^ "OLG bestätigte Urteil gegen Sabaditsch-Wolff". noen.at (in German). 20 December 2011.
  7. ^ Cliteur, Paul; Ellian, Afshin (2020). "The Five Models for State and Religion: Atheism, Theocracy, State Church, Multiculturalism, and Secularism". ICL Journal. 14 (1): 128–132.
  8. ^ Puppinck, G. (2020). "The censorship of speech about Islam before the European Court of Human Rights: the appalling case of ES v. Austria". Christianity World Politics. 24. doi:10.21697/CSP.2020.24.1.22. S2CID 234708682.
  9. ^ a b Kolig, Erich (2016). Freedom of Speech and Islam. Routledge. pp. 103–104. ISBN 9781317132813.
  10. ^ Kilpatrick, William (2012). Christianity, Islam, and Atheism: The Struggle for the Soul of the West. Ignatius. p. 234. ISBN 9781586176969.
  11. ^ "International counter-jihad organisations". Hope not Hate. 11 January 2018.
  12. ^ "Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff Speaks Up for Israel". The Jewish Chronicle. 10 December 2010.
  13. ^ "Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, Convicted of Hate Speech Against Muslims, Meets with Trump Advisor Kris Kobach". Southern Poverty Law Center. 9 March 2017.
  14. ^ Pirro, Jeanine (2019). Radicals, Resistance, and Revenge: The Left's Plot to Remake America. Hachette UK. p. 182. ISBN 9781546085171.
  15. ^ Sabaditsch-Wolff, Elisabeth (2019). The Truth Is No Defense. New English Review Press. ISBN 978-1943003303.
  16. ^ Kern, S. (2020). "Review of The Truth Is No Defense". Middle East Quarterly. 27 (3).
  17. ^ Sabaditsch-Wolff, Elisabeth (2023). Truth Was My Crime: A Life Fighting for Freedom. Amazon. ISBN 9798854860260.
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