Antisocial?

What Is Scientology? and other works by Church of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard have been condemned by a Russian court and may again be added to the country’s Federal List of Extremist Materials, according to this report in the Jurist. The court in Shchyolkovo, outside of Moscow, found Hubbard’s writings to be “calls to extremist activity” “aimed at creating an isolated social group whose members are trained … to fight with the world.”

In an interview with Voice of Russia, Sue Taylor, identified as the President of the Church of Scientology, says that the church was “not allowed to give testimony in the case.” She describes What Is Scientology? as “a reference book” which “tells you very briefly what our beliefs are.”

According to the Moscow Times, a regional court in Khanty-Mansiisk had proscribed more than two-dozen works by Hubbard in March of last year but reversed its decision this past April, removing the titles from the Justice Ministry’s list. Publishing works on the Federal List of Extremist Materials can be prosecuted as inciting hatred, a crime punishable by a prison sentence of up to five years.

The latest reversal reflects the uncertain status of Scientology in Russia, where it has been deemed a “totalitarian sect” by Russia’s Orthodox Church. Despite successive rulings by the European Court of Human Rights in 2007 and 2009, Russia has refused to allow the church to re-register as an official religion. According to Taylor, the Church of Moscow had been registered in 1994 but “Since then there have been some ups and downs.”

You may be surprised to learn that the U.S. Department of State, in keeping with the American predilection for freedom of speech and of the press—and of religion—has, in its annual International Religious Freedom Report, criticized several European governments for their inhospitable treatment of Church of Scientology. The church, whose confrontations with federal agencies like the IRS or the FBI have been less than amicable, was convicted of fraud in France in 2009. In Belgium, one of the scolded Europeans, prosecutor Jean-Claude Van Espen “recommended that the Church and a dozen of its adherents should face criminal charges of fraud and extortion.” In concluding a ten-year investigation, Van Espen sought to have the church classified as a criminal organization.

In January of this year the Scientology Newsroom claimed that the church had completed “a two-year project to provide Scientology Founder L. Ron Hubbard’s beginning books of Dianetics and Scientology to every lending library on Earth.”   According to Hubbard’s official website, more than 250 million copies of his books are in circulation. As Sue Taylor puts it, “Other religions may just have one – a Holy Book. All of the writings of Mr. L. Ron Hubbard are scriptures.”