Right after the Bataclan jihad massacre in Paris, in which Islamic jihadis murdered 130 people, Soti Triantafillou quoted Marco Polo saying that “a fanatical Muslim is the one who cuts your head and a moderate is the one who holds you down so he can cut it.”
It is unlikely in the extreme that Marco Polo ever really said that, as there was no recognized category known as “moderate Muslims” in his day, but in any case, Soti Triantafyllou was hauled into court for “Islamophobia” and “racism,” that is, for saying something critical of Islam. When, exactly, did Greece adopt Sharia blasphemy laws? Would Soti Triantafyllou have been tried for criticizing any other religion?
Her acquittal is a victory for the freedom of speech, but it is still easy to see which way the wind is blowing.
“Soti Triantafyllou Innocent,” translated from “Αθώα η Σώτη Τριανταφύλλου,” by Stavros Theodorakis, Protagon, May 2, 2018 (thanks to Menis):
The author Soti Triantafyllou has been acquitted by an Athens court…She was accused of public incitement of hatred and was sued by Panagiotis Dimitra, blogger of the “Observatory of Racist Crimes,” for her text in “Athens Voice.”
Mrs. Triantafyllou’s text was published on November 14, 2015, the day after jihadists attacked the Bataclan Center and elsewhere in Paris. The title of her article in the weekly “Athens Voice” was “Rock and Roll Will Never Die.”
Soti Triantafyllou was prosecuted for public incitement to hatred, based on the anti-racist law, as in her text, among others, she mentioned a statement by Marco Polo about Muslims, that “a fanatical Muslim is the one who cuts your head and a moderate is the one who holds you down so he can cut it.” At midday on Wednesday, May 2, the acquittal of the author was decided.
Teachers, journalists and academics from the outset supported Soti Triantafyllou with an open letter. The Center for Liberal Studies (KEFIM) says: “The present acquittal of the writer is a great vindication for KEFIM, Soti Triantafyllou and the freedom of speech and of the press.”…
As for the courtroom history of the case, on November 14, 2015, the day after the attack on the Bataclan center by Islamic terrorists, the article by Triantafyllou was published in Athens Voice. Five months later, on April 14, 2016, the Greek Government Helsinki Monitor (GHM) submitted a petition to the prosecutor for racist crimes, indicating 23 cases of alleged crimes for investigation and possible referral to trial. One of the 23 was the article of Triantafyllou, to which GHM attributed “Islamophobia and the defamation of the Muslim religion”.
The GHM category had two strands. The first was that the article was “extremely Islamophobic in general against Muslims and a defamation of Islam.” The second was that the article “among other things includes the false allegation that supposedly Marco Polo (said that) a fanatical Muslim is the one who cuts your head, while a moderate is he who holds you down so that your head can be cut off.”
Subsequently, the Prosecutor’s Office of Athens, as a consequence of GHM’s initial petition, referred Soti Triantafyllou to a trial under Article 1 of the anti-racist law, which states that a person is punished by imprisonment and a fine, “whether intentionally, publicly, orally the press, via the Internet or by any other means or means, incites, causes, excites or exhorts acts or actions that may cause discrimination, hatred or violence against a person or group of persons identified on the basis of race, color, the ethnic or ethnic origin, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability in a manner which endangers public order or threatens the life, freedom or physical integrity of such persons.”…
Source: Jihad Watch