The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has delivered an important judgment about the conviction and imprisonment of a journalist and an editor for publishing an article critizing Islam. The judgment is to be situated in a series of judgments by the Strasbourg Court dealing with religious insult, religious hate speech or blasphemy, such as in Otto-Preminger-Institut v. Austria (IRIS 1995-1/1), Wingrove v. the United Kingdom (IRIS 1997-1/8), I.A. v. Turkey (IRIS 2005-10/3), Klein v. Slovakia (IRIS 2007-1/1) Giniewski v. France (2006-4/1), Aydin Tatlav v. Turkey (IRIS 2006-7/2), Fouad Belkacem v. Belgium (2017-9/1), Mariya Alekhina and others (Pussy Riot) v. Russia (IRIS 2018-8/2) and E.S. v. Austria (IRIS 2019-1/1). In Tagiyev and Huseynov v. Azerbaijan, the ECtHR found that the fact that some people can be offended in their religious beliefs cannot be a sufficient argument to interfere with the right to freedom of expression as part of a public debate on matters of religion. The crucial issue is whether the offensive or insulting statements about a religion incite to hatred or violence
