Charles at Little Green Footballs posted a link to an IslamOnline article claiming that Norway has criminalized blasphemy, and he is certainly correct in expressing skepticism.
I now see that Bruce Bawer has since mailed in an update clarifying some points, but I still think it merits a clear response from a Norwegian.
First, there are no plans, in any political party, to introduce such a law in Norway, the government has explicitly stated nothing whatsoever will happen in parliament in reaction to the Muhammad cartoon row.
Second, Bawer quite correctly puts this in connection with an article in the penal code prohibiting religious discrimination and hate speech, but as Bjørn Stærk and others have pointed out earlier, that is a lot of fuss over very little. I'm not more happy about that law than anyone else is, but that is not because I fear it will be a clampdown on free expression. It is more because it annoys me that our elected representatives insist on making politically correct "laws" that are written to "send a signal", not to actually be enforced by the courts.
Unlike in the US, Norway's Supreme Court doesn't "strike down" laws that are unconstitutional, it just ignores them. Thus we still have a blasphemy law on our books, paragraph 142 in the penal code, that was last used against the writer Arnulf Øverland after he held a strong, anti-Christian speech in 1931. The state lost the case against him spectacularly, and since then, despite some amendments to it, that law has been in deep coma. Norway is, after the current cartoon conflict, closer to finally abandoning it than ever before. The argument made against abandoning it the last time, was that it would send "a wrong signal." There was no intention to ever actually ever use it. Article 100 in our constitution trumps "signals" from the Storting every time.
Farahat Al-Abbar's article in IslamOnline is essentially pure fantasy. Here are a few excerpts with comments.
The Norwegian parliament has amended the Penal Code to criminalize blasphemy in the wake of the republication of Danish cartoons that lampooned Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) by a Norwegian magazine, Christian and Muslim leaders in Norway said on Tuesday, February 14.
This is totally wrong, as anyone can find out. The chairwoman of our parliament's justice committee, Labour's Anne Marit Bjørnflaten, stated to the press (my translation):
We have not done that, says Bjørnflaten.
- Nothing has happened in the Storting in relation to the conflict about the caricature-drawings. I don't imagine anything will happen either, she adds.
But IOL drones on:
"Law 150-A,
There is no such law. Norwegian laws aren't listed that way, they have an official and a popular name, and they have a date, and are enumerated per yer. There is no section 150A in the penal code, and since section 150 is about shipping accidents, I doubt any future 150A will have any relevance to cartoons or religions. The claim undoubtedly refers to section 135a of the penal code, which I discussed above. That law prohibits discrimination and hate-speech on the grounds of ethnicity, religion and sexual orientation. I dislike such laws, and so, obviously, does our judiciary.
which has been approved by parliament, criminalizes blasphemy and clearly prohibits despising others or lampooning religions in any form of expression, including the use of photographs,"
This is sheer fantasy.
Norway's Deputy Archbishop Oliva Howika
There is no such person. Norway is Lutheran, and has no archbishop, thus no deputy archbishop, and the guy pictured in the article is a priest (domprost) named Olav Dag Hauge. The writer at least got the O and the H right.
told reporters after a meeting in Doha with Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, the head of the International Union of Muslim Scholars.
Hauge denies having said such a thing when asked by Dagbladet. He confirms having mentioned article 135 (really 135a) in the penal code. That law, again discussed above, was instituted before the cartoon controversy. And, most importantly, it can have no effect whatsoever on the cartoons this debate is about, or any other for that matter.
10:05:56 PM 
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