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Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff

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Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff
Born1971 (age 52–53)
NationalityAustrian
OccupationCounter-jihad activist
Known forE.S. v. Austria

Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff (born 1971)[1] is an Austrian counter-jihad activist.[2][3] 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[edit]

Background[edit]

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 spent much of her life in Muslim countries, first in Iran until the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Her family thereafter returned to Austria, before moving to Chicago, where she completed most of her schooling. She worked for the Austrian embassy in Kuwait at the time of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990. She moved back to Austria, before again moving to Kuwait, and later went to work in Libya in 2000.[4] She returned to Austria in 2001, and had earned a master's degree in diplomatic and strategic studies by 2006.[5] She was approached by the Freedom Party of Austria in 2007 to develop a seminar on Islam, which she taught for two years.[5]

Hate speech case[edit]

In 2009, a journalist infiltrated one of her seminars and recorded it, after which she was charged with hate speech.[5][6] She was convicted by a Viennese court for "disparaging religious doctrines" in 2011, due to having described the Muslim Prophet Muhammad as a pedophile.[7][8][9] 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][10][11] 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.[6] 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.[12]

Other activities[edit]

Sabaditsch-Wolff has been active in the Citizens' Movement Pax Europa, the International Civil Liberties Alliance,[13] 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] She participated in all of the annual international counter-jihad conferences held from 2007 to 2013,[13][14][15] and has been featured extensively on the counter-jihad blog Gates of Vienna.[2] In 2010 she spoke in Israel alongside Geert Wilders at the invitation of former MK Eliezer Cohen,[16] and she posed for photographs together with Donald Trump and Frank Gaffney at the launch of The United West in Florida in 2011.[2] In 2016, she was knighted by the Knights of Malta.[2] She was invited to meet with Kansas Secretary of State and Trump advisor Kris Kobach in 2017.[17] She has been interviewed regarding her legal case by Jeanine Pirro.[18]

In 2019, she published her book The Truth is No Defense, a part autobiography about her legal case and her life.[19] 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. An updated and revised version of the book, titled Truth Was My Crime: A Life Fighting for Freedom was published in 2023.[5]

Bibliography[edit]

  • The Truth Is No Defense. New English Review Press. 2019. ISBN 9781943003303.
  • Truth Was My Crime: A Life Fighting for Freedom. Amazon. 2023. ISBN 9798854860260.

References[edit]

  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. ^ Hafez, Farid (18 May 2018). "Controversial manifesto against "new anti-Semitism" in France: Cutting Suras to suit". Qantara.de.
  4. ^ Morrison, Sarah (February 26, 2010). "Activist takes on radical Islam: Sabaditsch-Wolff: 'It remains to be seen whether the truth is a defense'". The Jewish State. Archived from the original on March 13, 2010.
  5. ^ a b c d Stern, Marilyn (6 November 2023). "Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff: When Speech Ceases to be Free". Middle East Forum.
  6. ^ a b Kolig, Erich (2016). Freedom of Speech and Islam. Routledge. pp. 103–104. ISBN 9781317132813.
  7. ^ "Beraterin der FPÖ droht Haft". OE24 (in German). 20 December 2011.
  8. ^ "Urteil gegen Sabaditsch-Wolff hält: Herabwürdigung religiöser Lehren: OLG bestätigt Urteil erster Instanz". news.at (in German). 20 December 2011.
  9. ^ "OLG bestätigte Urteil gegen Sabaditsch-Wolff". noen.at (in German). 20 December 2011.
  10. ^ 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.
  11. ^ 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.
  12. ^ Kilpatrick, William (2012). Christianity, Islam, and Atheism: The Struggle for the Soul of the West. Ignatius. p. 234. ISBN 9781586176969.
  13. ^ a b "International counter-jihad organisations". Hope not Hate. 11 January 2018.
  14. ^ Hannus, Martha (2012). Counterjihadrörelsen– en del av den antimuslimska miljön (in Swedish). Expo Research. pp. 67–76. Archived from the original on 1 November 2022.
  15. ^ Lazaridis, Gabriella; Campani, Giovanna (2016). Understanding the Populist Shift: Othering in a Europe in Crisis. Taylor & Francis. pp. 86–92. ISBN 9781317326069.
  16. ^ "Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff Speaks Up for Israel". The Jewish Chronicle. 10 December 2010.
  17. ^ "Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, Convicted of Hate Speech Against Muslims, Meets with Trump Advisor Kris Kobach". Southern Poverty Law Center. 9 March 2017.
  18. ^ Pirro, Jeanine (2019). Radicals, Resistance, and Revenge: The Left's Plot to Remake America. Hachette UK. p. 182. ISBN 9781546085171.
  19. ^ Kern, Soeren (2020). "Review of The Truth Is No Defense". Middle East Quarterly. 27 (3).