ECtHR: Islamic book ban in Russia breached freedom of expression

A Russian national, a publisher and a religious association suffered a violation of their ECHR right to freedom of expression, the European Court of Human Rights has unanimously held.

The case concerned anti-extremism legislation in Russia and a ban on publishing and distributing Islamic books. The three applicants in the case, a Russian national, a publisher and a religious association, complained that the Russian courts had ruled in 2007 and 2010 that books by Said Nursi, a well-known Turkish Muslim theologian and commentator of the Qur’an, were extremist and banned their publication and distribution. The applicants had either published some of Nursi’s books or had commissioned them for publication.

The court found in particular that the Russian courts had not justified why the ban had been necessary. They had merely endorsed the overall findings of an expert report carried out by linguists and psychologists, without making their own analysis or, most notably, setting the books or certain of their expressions considered problematic in context.

Furthermore, they had summarily rejected all the applicants’ evidence explaining that Nursi’s books belonged to moderate, mainstream Islam.

Overall, the courts’ analysis in the applicants’ cases had not shown how Nursi’s books, already in publication for seven years before being banned, had ever caused, or risked causing, interreligious tensions, let alone violence, in Russia or, indeed, in any of the other countries where they were widely available.