The Church of Scientology has been controversial in the US for quite a while and gets in the news every once in a while, but it operates openly - there are prominently marked buildings where activities take place and there are sometimes Scientology evangelists out and about downtown.
I understand that some countries in Europe, specifically Germany and France, do not look kindly on Scientology. Is it actually illegal in any meaningful sense to adhere to Scientology as a religion, practice it (e.g. receive or perform Scientology auditing), or preach it/evangelize, or is it mostly a matter of the government not granting it tax exemption and treating it as a for-profit business but otherwise leaving it alone? Are there people cowering in a basement in Dresden praying to L. Ron Hubbard that the police won’t find them and send them off to a re-education camp and smash their e-meters against a rock? Do background checks for employment in Paris include an inquiry as to whether or not the candidate is a Scientologist, and if the answer is yes, no job for them pursuant to French Statute 44.32a?
The latter in France, although “leaving them alone” isn’t exactly correct. It appears for instance on an official list of dangerous sects, rather than simply not receiving a tax exempt status.
There has been a number of civil and criminal cases against the Church of Scientology, and if there were more of them, it wouldn’t surprise me much if it were dissolved and banned as a criminal enterprise. It might be shown for instance that the whole Church (as opposed to a branch of it or a number of its leaders) is supporting fraud and/or extortion.
In Spain it’s not illegal to be a Scientologist individually, but it’s classified as “a sect” (in the “bunch of criminals which brainwash people” sense, not in the “branch or offshoot of a larger religious organization” one), so trying to proselitize into it or organizing meetings under that label is illegal. Some of the things they do are illegal: in Spain, the medical system’s duty to the life of a child trumps parents’ religious objections; someone who didn’t take their kids to the doctor because “my religion says so” can be charged with child neglect (the actual charges will vary depending on the consequences and can reach “with the result of death”, worse than homicide of someone for whom the accused wasn’t a caretaker); someone who doesn’t vaccinate a child can be accused of a crime against public health.
One of the fringe political parties which only run in a handful of elections is well-known to be the Scientologists, but distributing L. Ron’s literature isn’t illegal and they are very careful about what they say and how they say it.
Nava: I think you mean “cult”. “Sect” just means a branch of a certain religion, and generally carries no negative or positive connotations. Or, as clairobscur put it “dangerous sect”. Still, it can’t really be called a sect because there aren’t different types of it. One might say Shi’as are a sect of Islam. But the CoS is one unto itself.
OK, so cult; much appreciated (both cult/culto and sect/secta are false friends, which is a pain in the dictionary). The point that I’m not talking about the religious but brainwashing meanings of the word remains.
I can’t imagine that it is illegal to be a Scientologist in any place that we would call a liberal democracy. It is basic individual liberty that you can be as nutty as you want to be as long as you don’t harm others. The Scientology organisation does have varying legal status in different countries. In the UK it operates quite legally, but is not deemed to be a religion or a charity and does not get the benefits that those type of organisations do. It has the same legal status as any other private organisation.
I don’t think that’s true in Europe. A “sect” (or “sekt” in Swedish) does definitely carry negative connotations, very much so. I would say that Nava is correct when using the English word “sect” for Scientology, that’s how the word is used in Europe. Cult is another thing, seldom used in serious matters.
The wikipedia article on “sect” says (bolding mine):
The US, for one. It has tax-exempt status, though this status is controversial because of their practice of requiring fixed donations for services, which some say is tantamount to selling services.
Italy, South Africa, Australia, Sweden, New Zealand, Portugal, and Spain; according to Wikipedia. And the idiotic European Court of Human Rights has even tried to force Russia to do the same.
Well, I used “sect” because the French word is “secte”. It didn’t occur to me to translate it using the indeed more correct word “cult” (especially since in turn “culte” doesn’t have a negative connotation in French)
Spain acknowledges it as a religious organization, but considers it a harmful one and one which is not legally incorporated in Spain. Recognizing that something is a religion does not automatically grant anybody who claims to be one of its officials the right to act in loco judiciary with regards to registering marriages, or make any donation to a group which claims to be linked to that religion be tax-deductible. Each of Spain’s RCC dioceses, Oxfam, Greenpeace and Amnesty International had to jump through exactly the same loops to get the second; only the first of those four have jumped through the loops required to get the first (so have other religious organizations, but if for example the Iglesia Evangélica de Filadelfia grows a splinter, the splinter needs to apply). There isn’t a legally-incorporated organization called Iglesia de la Cienciología or suchlike which has gone through either one, but AFAIK there isn’t one for Sikhs either and it’s acknowledged as a religion.
Two rights which are granted to individuals with regards to religion, and it doesn’t matter whether the religion itself has an organization representing it in Spain: attacking people for their religion and discriminating on the basis of religion when it is not relevant to the job are both illegal. If someone threw tomatoes at Tom Cruise yelling “eat this, you sciento!”, the assault would be considered an attack on the basis of religion (a hate crime if you will) and carry larger penalties than a personal attack; if a director claimed that he’d been considering Cruise for a role until he learned of his religion (said director had been an ostrich in a previous life), this would be grounds for Cruise to sue the director to Hell and back.