Christian Governor of Jakarta Faces Blasphemy Trial In Indonesia

So-called "moderate" Indonesia continues on its path towards hardline fundamentalism. Freedom of religion is supposed to be part of Indonesia's constitution, but apparently not. Minority religious adherents are continue to be persecuted and the Christian governor of Jakarta, who is of Chinese descent, is now on trial for blasphemy. What, you might ask, did Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (aka Ahok) do to warrant a blasphemy charge? This:

Ahok angered religious conservatives after he referenced a verse from the Islamic holy book, Al-Maidah 51 of the Qur’an, rather boldly telling voters they should not be duped by religious leaders using the verse to justify the claim that Muslims should not be led by non-Muslims.

Indonesian hardliners have huge influence, and are responsible for much of the persecution. If he does get convicted he could face 5 years in prison. Thankfully he's not in Pakistan where he could face the death penalty.

More on The Guardian UK.

More info on this France 24 video, including how former president of Indonesia- Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono- has been supporting the hardliners, more than likely because his son is running against Ahok in the upcoming governor elections.  Just politics as usual. But it's shameful that Muslim majority countries continue to persecute minority religions, while Western countries continue to embrace Islam.

3 Men Jailed In Commie Burma For Insulting Buddhism

It's not only in Muslim countries that individuals can wind up in jail for insulting religion, in communist Myanmar fka Burma they can too.

A New Zealand bar manager and two Burmese men have all been sentenced to 2 1/2 years in jail for posting an ad for their bar on Facebook which was deemed insulting to Buddhism.

2 1/2 years with hard labor is outrageous.

Although the V Gastro Bar apologized for offending the overly sensitive, Phil Blackwood, the general manager, Tun Thurein, the owner, and Htut Ko Ko Lwin, the manager, were all arrested, December 2014.

Human Rights Watch responded to the sentencing:

“That these three men acted in a culturally insensitive way by posting the Buddha with headphones image on Facebook is obvious, but that is nothing they should have been hauled into court for, much less sent to prison,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch.

A fine, okay, whatever, but jail time?

I guess if this had been in Pakistan and someone had dared to depict Mohammed with earphones, they'd all be dead by now.

More here.

Kill 'Pussy Riot' Members In Russian Orthodox Video Game

Apparently the Russian Orthodox (Christian) Church wants more young ones attending services, so on July 11- at a church youth festival- it debuted a new video game aimed at getting more of them involved.  It's called "Don't Let Pussy Riot Enter Into The Cathedral", and the kids get to "kill" the feminist anti-Putin punk rockers with a cross before they can enter a church. Kill?  What's wrong with this picture.

Two of the three arrested members of Pussy Riot- Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 23 and Maria Alyokhina, 25-  are still serving their two year jail sentence for offending the "religious feelings of believers" after barging into an Orthodox church last year and singing a song asking the Virgin Mary to help get rid of Vladimir Putin. This offended enough people to warrant a two year prison term! Unbelievable. 30-year-old Yekaterina Samutsevich was released.

You can play the game on RFE/RL here.  But turn off your sound, because the song that got the three of them arrested and then jailed- "Punk Prayer For Putin" - accompanies the video game, and it's pretty painful.

European Female Arrested For Desecrating Quran In Oman

An unidentified European woman was arrested in Oman for allegedly ripping pages out of a Quran and rubbing them on her feet. Apparently someone saw her desecrating the holy book near Al Hamadah Mosque in Sohar and immediately called the police.

If this indeed happened, the woman must have been drunk or mentally unstable to desecrate a Quran in public in a Muslim country.

The Omanis are particularly appalled that she did this during Ramadan.

Apparently this is the first time an infidel has done such a thing.

Source: Gulf News

No Blasphemy Law For Tunisia's New Constitution

Tunisia might be ruled by a majority Islamist parliament now, but they're not getting they're blasphemy law written into the new constitution, at least for now. That's one for the good guys.

Mustapha Ben Jaafar, the speaker of the National Constituent Assembly said:

“There will certainly be no criminalization."

“That is not because we have agreed to (allow) attacks on the sacred, but because the sacred is something very, very difficult to define.”

That means no long prison terms for someone accused of blasphemy. Or death, if you happen to live in Pakistan.

However, you can bet the Islamists will continue to attempt to Islamize Tunisia, a once secular country under dictator Ben Ali, but the secularists will fight back. In fact, the media and secularists have been instrumental in ensuring that the blasphemy clause does not make it into the constitution. Surprisingly, Ennahda has agreed to it. Surprising, because it has strongly advocated a global ban on blaspheming, ramped up after the violent protests in response to the anti-Islam film.

Jaafar, whose leftist party Ettakatol is part of the ruling coalition said:

“Sometimes we hold talks within the troika (three-party ruling coalition) and we feel that they (Ennahda) are prepared to let their opinions develop, to move the lines a bit.”

Jaafar, a strong proponent of freedom of expression said:

“There is a fundamental achievement of the revolution that should never be called into question, and that no one should be able to challenge, which is the freedom of expression and of the press.”

I wish them luck fending off the creeping Islamization of their country.

Kuwaiti Man Gets 10 Years For Insulting Islam on Twitter

26-year-old Hamad al-Naqi, the Kuwaiti man who has been sitting in jail for the past three months (since his arrest) for insulting Mohammed, Aisha (his 9-year-old wife) and Mohammed's companions via Twitter, will spend the next ten years in jail for those transgressions. Other charges included "spreading false news that undermined Kuwait's image abroad" (as though that takes much), and for insulting Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.

According to the court, al-Naqi had "endangered state security" with those insults, although I'm not quite sure how.

Khaled al-Shatti, his lawyer, seems overly positive. He told AFP:

“We plan to challenge the ruling against my client Hamad al-Naqi in the appeals court and we are very optimistic that the higher court will cancel the sentence."

Al-Naqi claims his account was hacked, which is a definite possibility, but the court didn't buy that excuse.

He could have been sentenced to death, since Kuwait recently passed a law approving the death sentence for 'cursing God'- and naturally there were those demanding it- but he lucked out that the bill has not yet been implemented. He did, however, receive the maximum sentence for his criminal tweets.

Our jails would be overflowing if we had the same laws as Kuwait.

Kuwaiti Writer Gets 7 Years Jail For Insulting Shi'ite Minority

Mohammad al-Mulaifi, a Sunni Muslim Kuwaiti writer, will spend seven years of his life in jail for allegedly insulting the Shi'ite minority via Twitter. He has also been fined around $18,000.

The court said Kuwaiti Mohammad al-Mulaifi posted falsehoods about sectarian divisions in the Gulf Arab country and insulted the Shi’ite faith and its scholars with comments that damaged Kuwait’s image.

He was arrested in February and his comments triggered protests by Shi’ites, according to Kuwaiti media. His lawyer was not immediately available for comment.

But Shi'ites are also targets.  Last month a man was arrested for blasphemy, though he denies it, for insulting Mohammad, Aisha et al, also via Twitter. He claims his account was hacked, and that he would
"....never attack the Holy Prophet." 

Blasphemy is punishable in Islam, but being critical of fellow Muslims?  Where is that in the Quran? And seven years for that?  I realize there is no freedom of speech in Muslim-majority countries, but come on.

This just makes it even more imperative that the push for global anti-blasphemy laws NEVER gets any traction.

7 Years In Jail For Blasphemy For Two Tunisian Men

 Since the Arab Spring, and the resulting rise of Islamism in the region, there seem to be more cases of jail time for 'blasphemers'.

Yesterday, a young Egyptian Christian teen was sentenced to three years in prison for mocking Islam on his Facebook page.  Now we hear of two Tunisians,  Ghazi Beji and Jabeur Mejri (both late twenties) who were fined approximately $800.00 each and sentenced at the end of March to seven years in jail.  According to the justice ministry spokesperson Chokri Nefti,

“They were sentenced, one of them in absentia, to seven years in prison, for transgressing morality, defamation and disrupting public order.”

Disrupting public order?

What's most troubling is that Mejri  and Beji (an atheist), like the young Egyptian, had posted their 'blaspehmous content'  on social networking sites. 

Beji wrote a book called “the Illusion of Islam”, discussing his views about Islam and religion. Mejri, also wrote a book. “Dark Land”, where he “cursed the government, Islamists, and expressed his hatred towards Arabs.“

Beji, a biotech food engineer, lucked out and fled to Greece, seeking asylum. When interviewed by Tunisia Live, Beji said,

  “After the Revolution, in March 2011, I said to myself Tunisia is a free and democratic country now and I should try to publish my book. I contacted several book publishers in Mahdia but they all refused to publish it. So I opted to upload it online.”

Not sure why he thought that a country that is now predominantly Islamist would not take offense to his writings, but I suppose hope springs eternal.  Not so, unfortunately, when you are dealing with religious fanatics. But it is interesting to note how many ex-Muslims there are who are atheists.  Plenty of them on Facebook.

On the other hand, Mejri, who is an English teacher, wasn't so lucky and is currently in police custody waiting to serve his seven years.

Human Rights Watch in Tunisia made their obligatory statement- that the sentencing was  “an attack on freedom of expression and freedom of belief.”   Not that any of the officials would care what HRW has to say about 'freedom', since there is no freedom of expression or belief in non-secular Muslim majority countries.