Hundreds of intellectuals and artists are concerned about its implications for freedom of expression, while police, lawyers, and prosecutors consider it too imprecise.
A privately owned printed book is not, so you should be able to attempt to piss other people off by burning it, if that is your perogative.
How is it your right to upset people? Freedom of speech is for speech towards the government, not everyone else. It isn't about what you're doing to the government, but to other citizens. You do not have a right to hurt or upset people, be it physical or non-physical.
Other than that, I agree you should find a civilized way to express your beliefs, but we shouldn’t, for good reasons, police the way people express thenselves. A law like this sets a precedent for religious organizations; that they can have their way if they (re)act violently. It will lead to more violence down the road so we need a better solution.
We shouldn't police peoples' expressions, but we should police their harmful actions against other people.
The law in this article is wrong, absolutely. It goes way too far and protects the symbol, which like you say the religion could then expand their symbols to cover more things. I'm saying the symbol shouldn't be protected, however it would be reasonable for the law to recognise the harmful intent against others and police that.
So, if you were to privately burn books or destroy religious symbols, that would be fine. However if you did it in public in front of religious people, then that could only reasonably be done with intent to cause harm, so it would be illegal.
We do not agree on what constitutes harm. I believe you should be free to try to upset others by expressing your views any way you want as long as it doesn't harm them. Getting upset is not getting harmed.
I believe you should be free to try to upset others
Why? Why should you be free to do this?
I believe you should be free to do whatever you like, so long as it does not impact others. When it starts to affect others, that's when your rights may need to be limited - because otherwise your rights will infringe upon theirs.
I believe you should be free to do whatever you like, so long as it does not impact others
I am deeply offended by that statement. It has profoundly impacted my emotional wellbeing. Please be consequent with your own words and delete your comment.
I would say targetting individuals when trying to upset them should be policed, however this is not about individuals but a large group.
If you, say, bankrupted someone's company so they had to sell all their possessions and then went up to them and burned the Quran they got from their now dead father as a present as a child or that had been in their family for generations right in front of them, that would be something that should be illegal as targetted harassment.
However here we are talking about criticism of a religion by burning a symbol of the religion, not one particular person's possessions.