Freedom of expression and religious hate speech: building tolerance in the post–secular era

Abstract

Freedom of expression is the channel for the formation of free public opinion, which is the foundation of political pluralism and democracy itself. The reverse side of freedom of expression are the speeches of hatred directed against a particular group of people denigrating those traits that pursue social rejection are assigned. In our global and technological context, the echo of this kind of discourse is multiplied through the internet and social networks, where the word gigantic destructive potential to sow hatred. The first question that arises from this situation is whether freedom of expression protects the dissemination of any ideas, even those that despitefully dignity. The second big issue is how to distinguish between hate speech not protected by freedom of expression, and critical or obscene speech itself protects this freedom.
Global phenomena such as immigration, cultural and religious pluralism and international terrorism, favor the emergence of new strains to which the law hesitates and contradicts itself. Friction can not find a satisfactory response mechanism because cultural visions of the problem are very different. As a result, the construction of the legal right of tolerance has serious difficulties in the multicultural reality of globalization.
This paper compared the legal scale models from different approaches, serve to focus the resolution of conflicts between freedom of expression and religious freedom are described. Are analyzed as well, the American paradigm, characterized by the idea of tolerance from the interpretation of the First Amendment to the US Constitution; and the traditionally more restrictive to freedom of expression as a result of the greater protection afforded to other rights that conflict with it, such as honor, non–discrimination and freedom of religion European model. Along with this, the Islamic model, the progressive approach of the US and European paradigms as well as the position of the UN, the Council of Europe and the European Court of Human Rights to the problem of religious defamation is analyzed. After that, it is committed to an active construction of the notion of religious tolerance, inspired by UNESCO's position, which means tolerance and civic courage actively committed to the universal rights inherent to all human beings. A concept of tolerance that does not make us indifferent to any idea that only accepts that respect those rights and start recognizing them.
From this concept two legal proposals to guide the conflict between freedom of expression and religious acts are set: the incorporation of religious feelings as securable of religious freedom on the one hand; and, secondly, the justification of legal mechanisms of reaction to religious hatred, ultimately, are covered by the principle of prohibition of abuse of rights.