“We must not allow the freedom of speech … to be used as a cover for assaulting the sensibilities and exalted moral and religious values which are respected by all of humanity,” said Justice Minister Gholamhossein Elham.
But he’s got it wrong. This is what he should have said: “We must not allow a sense of offense that is exaggerated beyond all proportion … to be used as a cover for assaulting innocent human beings, destroying the principles of free inquiry (on which rests the harmony of a society in which people of good faith differ in their religious and philosophical perspectives) and imposing the supremacism of one belief-system upon everyone.”
“Iran urges Dutch not to air Koran film: report,” from Reuters (thanks to Hot Air):
TEHRAN (Reuters) – Iran has urged the Netherlands to prevent the screening of a film in which a right-wing populist lawmaker plans to lay out his view of the Koran, a news agency in the Islamic Republic said on Saturday.
Justice Minister Gholamhossein Elham expressed concern about what he called the making of an offensive film against the Koran in a letter to his Dutch counterpart Ernst Hirsch Ballin, the Fars News Agency said.
He called on Ballin to prevent this “provocative and satanic act on the basis of European Convention on Human Rights,” the news agency report, picked up by the BBC in London, said.
“We must not allow the freedom of speech … to be used as a cover for assaulting the sensibilities and exalted moral and religious values which are respected by all of humanity,” Elham, who is also government spokesman, said in the letter.