Laughing Matters

On February 26, 2008, the Council of the European Union (CEU) arrived at a Framework Decision designed to combat particularly serious forms of racism and xenophobia by criminal law (CEU 2008).1 By proposing a comprehensive framework, this decision marks an important moment in the evolution of EU human rights guidelines which, since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, have developed piecemeal a patchwork of principles affirming human rights and condemning expressions of hate speech and incitements to racial hatred. Of particular interest for scholars working on the Middle East and its European diaspora is the criminalization of human rights violations that contribute to incitement and which include religion, not only as a freedom of practice but as a category that excites discrimination, intimidation, and coercion. While the CEU decision, in its affi rmation of religion as a relevant category, attempts to steer a course between the diverse forms of state protection of press freedoms and hate speech, there is nothing particularly new about the inclusion of religion as some might think. Indeed, since the late 1990s various EU documents have affi rmed the principle that religious freedom cannot be enjoyed in a climate of defamation and that incitements to racial hatred target religious identity.2 Th e CEU decision marks a tension between its framing of criminal penalty and the EU’s position against including freedom from defama

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