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.

17-Year-Old Egyptian Christian Gets 3 Years In Jail For Insulting Islam

If Egyptian Christians think it's bad now, wait until there's an Islamist president to go with the Islamist majority in parliament, and Sharia law becomes the official law of the land. 

In Saudi Arabia, under Islamic blasphemy laws, insulting Islam, Mohammad or anyone or thing associated with Islam will get you executed, since the Saudis consider blasphemy 'apostasy' (and Sharia imposes the death penalty for apostasy). Same thing goes for Pakistan. Insult Mohammad, say bye-bye to your head. Defile the Quran, you'll spend the rest of your life in jail. 

Egypt, though not yet an Islamic state, still has blasphemy laws, although the sentences are tame in comparison to Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.  Gamal Abdou Massoud, a 17-year-old Christian boy who apparently defamed Islam and Mohammad by posting some cartoons on his Facebook page, will spend three years in prison for his actions. 

Gamal Abdou Massoud was also accused of distributing some of his cartoons to his school friends in a village in the southern city of Assiut, home to a large Christian population and the hometown of the late Coptic Orthodox Pope Shenouda.

“Assiut child’s court ordered the jailing of Gamal Abdou Massoud ... for three years after he insulted Islam and published and distributed pictures that insulted Islam and its Prophet,” the court said in a statement seen by Reuters.

The cartoons, published by Massoud in December, prompted some Muslims to attack Christians. Several Christian houses were burned and several Christians were injured in the violence.

Human rights lawyer Negad al-Borai said the jail sentence was the maximum penalty under Egyptian law for such a crime.

Christians, who make up about 10 percent of the country’s 80 million population, have long had a difficult relationship with Egypt’s overwhelmingly Muslim majority.

Tension between Muslims and Christians has simmered for years but has got worse since the revolt that toppled Hosni Mubarak. Christians have become increasingly worried by a surge in attacks on churches, which they blame on hardline Islamists, though experts say local disputes are often also to blame.

The maximum penalty for such a "crime"? The crime is sentencing a child (or anyone else for that matter) to three years in jail for exercising his right to freedom of speech.

But Muslim-majority countries aren't the only ones with blasphemy laws.  I was actually surprised to learn that many Western nations have them as well, though some don't implement the laws, and others just hand out hefty fines. Wales and the U.K. only recently abolished their blasphemy laws. But if the Organization of the Islamic Conference has its way, there will be a global "anti-blasphemy law", and we all better watch out.