Harry Potter and the Freedom of Religion -- longish

[alshainofthenorth]

Hello all,
(I never thought I'd try to start a discussion about HP and 
Christianity, but sometimes even the best of us must eat our words. 
Non-believer and recovered fundamentalist, for the record.)
 
Visitors of The Leaky Cauldron website have probably read about the 
Swedish private school where the principal prohibited the HP books, 
stating that they were incompatible with Christian values (not such a 
big deal considering that the same thing happens regularly in the US 
Bible belt, but it's the first time it's happened in the higly 
secularised Scandinavian countries.)
 
The evening paper Expressen picked up on this in an article:
http://www.expressen.se/index.jsp?a=113266 (translated at TLC)

Next day there was another story with comments from a child 
psychologist, a lawyer from the central school administration and a 
Lutheran bishop:
http://www.expressen.se/index.jsp?a=113473

Translation of the relevant parts:
Child psychologist: "I find it difficult to believe that children 
take what's written in the books as reality. Prohibition is the wrong 
way to go."
Lawyer: "A private school like this has to live up to the same 
criteria of comprehensiveness and objectivity as a municipal school. 
The value base as well as the goals should be the same.... I can 
imagine that there are Potter books in the municipal school, and then 
they should be allowed in the private school as well." 
Bishop: "Prohibiting the Potter books is over-reaction. It seems 
strange."

And the NEXT day, Expressen bought HP books for all the pupils in the 
school. http://www.expressen.se/index.jsp?a=114329
Two twelve-year-olds were interviewed, stating that the prohibition 
was ridiculous and that it was odd that HP was prohibited and not 
e.g. Lord of the Rings. The chairperson of the foundation, which runs 
the school, thought children get nightmares from the books and 
stressed again that Christianity and sorcery are incompatible.

And that was just the background. The main reason why I'm posting at 
all comes here: Considering that freedom to exercise your religion is 
one of the basic rights in a democratic society, does anyone think 
that Expressen went too far in making an issue of this? I do -- sure 
I think that it's a stupid idea to throw the HP books out of school 
libraries, but starting witch hunts and blowing things out of their 
proportions is pretty stupid too. At some point it seems to cross 
over into pointing fingers (and Swedish media are extremely sensitive 
at this time, because of the murder of a pastor's wife in a sectarian 
Pentecostal congregation barely a month ago. The family's nanny and 
the pastor are main suspects, and the media has been digging for all 
it's worth. Jumping onto the Christian-bashing bandwagon seems to be 
the fashionable thing right now.) 

Does it say explicitly somewhere that it's a basic human right to 
have Potter books in your school library? A principal is within his 
or her rights to make even stupid decisions concerning the running of 
their school (I'm sure that everyone has stories to tell about 
principals making bad decisions). At least one of the arguments was 
sound: Some children get nightmares from reading Harry Potter; and 
she did make this decision in good faith. 

If anyone's interested in a discussion along these lines, I hope we 
can keep our arguments civil and to the point. Discussions about 
politics or religion touch deep nerves.