On 15 February 2011, the Vienna Regional Criminal Court found that these statements implied that Muhammad had had paedophilic tendencies, and convicted Mrs S. for disparaging religious doctrines.
They all create their own reality because the truth is so cruel ...Only where expressions under Article 10 went beyond the limits of a critical denial, and certainly where they were likely to incite religious intolerance, might a state legitimately consider them to be incompatible with respect for the freedom of thought, conscience and religion and take proportionate restrictive measures.
The court noted that the domestic courts comprehensively explained why they considered that the applicant's statements had been capable of arousing justified indignation; specifically, they had not been made in an objective manner contributing to a debate of public interest (e.g. on child marriage), but could only be understood as having been aimed at demonstrating that Muhammad was not worthy of worship.
[a] Furthermore, the Court held that her statements were partly based on untrue facts and apt to arouse indignation in others.
The national courts found that Mrs S. had subjectively labelled Muhammad with paedophilia as his general sexual preference, and that she failed to neutrally inform her audience of the historical background, which consequently did not allow for a serious debate on that issue.
The court held further that even in a lively discussion it was not compatible with Article 10 of the Convention to pack incriminating statements into the wrapping of an otherwise acceptable expression of opinion and claim that this rendered passable those statements exceeding the permissible limits of freedom of expression.
The case was subject to criticism in public reporting, including the accusation that the judgment "imposed" a blasphemy law in Europe.
[5] The British charity Humanists UK, which campaigns on similar issues internationally, criticised the ruling as "fundamentally at odds with the spirit and tradition of free expression in Europe" expressed hope the case would be appealed and overturned in the Grand Chamber.
Some authors outlined that with this judgment the European Court of Human Right applied different standards to very similar situation ruled in the past.
Moreover, no concrete offence to any individual was demonstrated, but only to the quite fuzzy and undefined "religious peace" of Austria, and even that only potentially.
v Austria, and ruled that Polish courts in a similar case concerning Catholicism "failed to identify and carefully weigh the competing interests at stake" and overturned a 2012 conviction for blasphemy.
One new approach could be to examine all blasphemy-related restrictions on freedom of expression under Article 10 exclusively in terms of the legitimate aim of protecting public order (religious peace).