Read: The two clashing meanings of “free speech”

Predictably, the ECHR decision has rekindled old debates about freedom of expression, the perceived inability of some Muslims to handle polemics against their religion with grace, and—an issue that has gained new salience since Brexit—pan-European legal institutions and their tendency to foist outrageous decisions on member states. If you believe, as I do, that the free expression of ideas, including bad ideas, is a human right that no government can legitimately infringe, then you will probably find the ECHR decision appalling, and a bad sign for civil liberties in Europe. You can share this concern whether or not you think Europe’s Muslims will riot at hearing an unkind word about the Prophet.

What you should not believe, however, is that the ECHR’s decision represents a sudden change in European norms and laws about free speech. Those norms and laws have been rotten since long before Europe’s refugee crisis, before the vilification of the European Union by nationalist parties, before anyone thought that digging up dirt on a seventh-century Arabian trader was a matter of political urgency in modern Vienna. European laws (and, indeed, laws in most of the world) have long treated freedom of speech as a dispensable, very much alienable right. Cue Lee Greenwood, because this craven buffoonery makes me proud to be an American.

The ECHR judgment summarizes the Austrian court’s reasoning, which deserves quotation in full:

By accusing Muhammad of paedophilia, [E.S.] had merely sought to defame him, without providing evidence that his primary sexual interest in Aisha had been her not yet having reached puberty or that his other wives or concubines had been similarly young. In particular, [E.S.] had disregarded the fact that the marriage with Aisha had continued until the Prophet’s death, when she had already turned eighteen and had therefore passed the age of puberty.

Having sex with a child isn’t pedophilia, in other words, if the child’s prepubescence is not your biggest turn-on, or if you also have sex with adults, or if you continue having sex after the child reaches maturity. (Am I alone in finding the Austrian court’s reasoning offensive? Muhammad lived in late antiquity, when January-December marriages were common. The Austrian judges have no such excuse. A decade ago, Austria was laboring to shed its reputation as the “land of sex dungeons.” I don’t think “land of narrowly defined pedophilia” is much of an improvement.) On this basis, the court said E.S.’s statements were “untrue facts,” and fair game for prosecution.

Read: What Europe can teach America about free speech

The ECHR also judged E.S.’s claims “capable of arousing justified indignation given that they had not been made in an objective manner.” I have little doubt that her politics led her to a skewed view of an old controversy. Muslims have dealt with the issue of Aisha’s age for a very long time, and I see no evidence that E.S. cared to acquaint herself with the history of polemics and counterpolemics. (There is, for example, a tradition that says Aisha was older. But that tradition is weak and presents theological challenges of its own.) That an Austrian court presumes to say what constitutes balance in a case like this is itself a shocking encroachment on E.S.’s freedom of belief. Moreover, Muslim apologists also present a skewed view of the controversy, seemingly without fear of prosecution.