Austria: Judge Rules That Yodeling Offends Muslims

LateX'Dog

LateX'Dog

LateX'Dog

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It seems as though in Austria, the popular yodel is an insult to Muslims.

An Austrian court has recently fined a citizen for yodeling while mowing his lawn, according to a report in The Kronen Zeitung newspaper.

The citizen, 63-year-old Helmut G., was told by the court that his yodeling offended his next-door Muslim neighbors, who accused him of trying to mock and imitate the call of the Muezzin.

In Muslim tradition, the Muezzin is the chosen person at a mosque who leads the call to prayer at Friday services and the five daily times for prayer from one of the mosque's minarets.

The yodel is a song which is sung with an extended note which rapidly and repeatedly changes in pitch and makes a high-low-high-low sound. Developed in the Central Alps as a method of communication between alpine mountaineers or between alpine villages, the yodel later became part of the region's traditional lore and musical expression. The technique is used in many cultures throughout the world and Austria is one of the countries where it is most popular.

Unfortunately for Helmut G., his neighbors were in the middle of a prayer when he started to yodel. The Kronen Zeitung reported that he was fined 800 Euros after judges ruled that he could have tried to offend his neighbors and ridicule their belief.

Helmut G. clarified that “It was not my intention to imitate or insult them. I simply started to yodel a few tunes because I was in such a good mood.”
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http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/141152

I'm not sure if this is just a sensationalist headline, but regardless this is completely insane.
 
Yodelling is a pretty annoying thing if you have to live with it all the time, I imagine at most the family probably used their religion to shut the old git up.

Sensationalist headline? Couldn't be, not the Israel National News. :p

Edit - op are you Israeli? Why were you reading that news site?
 
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I mean really how can you possibly draw any conclusions from that.

Had they repeated politely asked him not to do it at a certain time over the course of several years? Was there evidence to suggest he was rude and purposefully harrassing? We have no idea.

Because on face value it sounds so silly I'd imagine there is a lot more that hasn't been reported.
 
scorza said:
If I had to guess this is probably the result of a long campaign of deliberately yodelling while the Muslim family were praying. No way was this just a one off.
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Oh do shut up, with your logic and all that crap :rolleyes: Let us blame muslims in peace thank you.
 
could it not be the case that the calls to prayer emanating from a mosque could be deemed offensive and interruptign the autrian blokes lawn cutting?


damn you religion of peace and tolerance
 
I'm not Muslim or even religious at all, but I too find Yodelling offensive and approve of this Ruling, hopefully they can nail Morris Dancers next.
 
scorza said:
If I had to guess this is probably the result of a long campaign of deliberately yodelling while the Muslim family were praying. No way was this just a one off.
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As an aside....
What if it is?
What if everytime they start praying, he starts yoddeling?
Is there something wrong with that, if he's not using a speaker system, or other amplification?

Just pondering...
 
Hikari Kisugi said:
As an aside....
What if it is?
What if everytime they start praying, he starts yoddeling?
Is there something wrong with that, if he's not using a speaker system, or other amplification?

Just pondering...
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It's anti-social, and harassment. The right to peace and quiet is well established in that part of the world.
 
scorza said:
It's anti-social, and harassment. The right to peace and quiet is well established in that part of the world.
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But a group prayer meeting is going to make as much noise a single yodeller surely?
He was cutting his grass in the afternoon, no?
So the lawnmower noise wasn't offensive but someone doing an Austrian tradition in Austria was. This in interesting.

I don't particularly care. I understood (perhaps mistakenly) Austria to be a rather xenophobic conservative right-wing place, but perhaps their legal system works well for minority groups.
 
From what i heard, the yodeller would do his stuff only on Fridays during Muslim prayer time. He had several nasty verbal arguments with them, so the Mosques lawyer threatened him with a lawsuit.
 
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