A Bangladeshi court has issued an arrest warrant for the writer of a 2003 novel “Bhanga Math” (“Broken Temple”). The book has already been banned for insulting Mohammed. The court issued the order in response to a petition from an Islamist accusing the author Salam Azad of hurting religious sentiment.
And did you hear about the 26 year old Kuwaiti who has been given a ten year (yes 10 year) prison sentence for insulting Mohammad on Twitter?
There’s also the atheist Turkish pianist who faces imprisonment for insulting Islamic values.
Islam kills, mutilates, segregates, dehumanises and all it takes for an arrest and prison sentence is ‘hurt religious sentiment’.
Talk about an upside down world.
(Top Link via Anne Marie Waters)
I’m blogging every half an hour from 9am to 3pm GMT in support of the Secular Student Alliance blogothon. The SSA is trying to raise £100,000 by 16 June.
Try to support the SSA if you can. If we’re going to beat the religion industry, we need to support organisations promoting secularism and reason.
Here’s a link to the official SSA Week page, which has lots of information about the SSA as well as an easy-to-find donation widget.
Heard of Sanal Edamaruku? He is a skeptic in India; his most famous exploit is providing a rational explanation for a “bleeding Jesus” in Mumbai (see Youtube clip titled: Jesus water dropping miracle in Mumbai – Sanal Edamaruku explains). The reason this is his most famous work is that the Catholic Church is pushing his prosecution for “deliberately hurting religious feelings”, which is a crime in India. Is there any doubt that the Church (TM) would pursue similar actions in the USA and elsewhere, if only it were allowed? The only thing restraining religious abuse of power and privilege is the denial of said power and privilege.
Ain’t that the truth.
Good post Maryam.
Religious people complain about being offended, but we are offended by religion and the murder, mutilation, rape, starvation, sexism, racism and homophobic bullshit that comes with religion every single day.
Well, we need to say enough is enough, get off our arses and actually confront these idiots.
When you offend a religious person you also offend magic man in the sky. When you offend magic man, religious people feel they have to come to his defence to stop magic man becoming very very pissed of.
When a religious person offends a non-religious person it makes magic man very very happy. As you can see the two cases are not at all alike.
Now that you explain it this way… I understand!
This blog has been used as inspiration for a Jesus and Mo!
http://www.jesusandmo.net/2012/06/13/maim/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+JesusAndMo+%28Jesus+and+Mo%29
I posted it. Thanks for giving me the heads up.
Maryam:
Ain’t that the truth.
Somehow a long dead pedophile has rights that trump an existing human being…