MUSLIM HATE OF THE INTERNET!
Bangladesh Killings Send Chilling Message to Secular Bloggers
By ELLEN BARRY
MARCH 30, 2015
The New York Times
DHAKA, Bangladesh — When the steamy, clamorous evening had settled over
this city, and Oyasiqur Rhaman had finished his day’s work at a travel
agency, he would turn to one of his favorite pastimes: Poking fun at
fundamentalist Islam.
Mr.
Rhaman, 27, blogged under the name Kutshit Hasher Chhana, or the Ugly
Duckling, and he specialized in sharp-edged satire. In one post, he
adopted the persona of a self-important believer fielding questions
from an atheist. (An example: “See, the captive women, impressed at the
heroism of the Muslim fighters, used to engage in sex with them
willingly. Don’t you see that it gave pleasures to them as well?”) He
posted photos of sausages wrapped in pastries, labeled “pigs in a
burqa.”
On
Monday morning, after he left home for the travel agency, Mr. Rhaman
was killed for what he had posted. Three young men — among them
students of madrasas here in the capital and in Chittagong — surrounded
him and sliced at his head with machetes, cutting deep gouges into his
forehead, face and throat. His body was left on the pavement in a pool
of congealing blood.
Two
men were captured by local residents and handed over to the police,
according to Mohammad Salahuddin, who heads the district police
station. Those men said an acquaintance known as Masum had instructed
them to kill Mr. Rhaman because “he made some comments against Islam”
on social media, but that they had not read the comments themselves.
The
killing closely followed the pattern of another five weeks earlier,
when young men with machetes surrounded a secular blogger and author,
Avijit Roy, as he left a book fair.
Mr.
Rhaman took Mr. Roy’s murder to heart, changing his Facebook profile
image to read “I am Avijit.” Over the next few days, he also mourned
the 2013 killing of another blogger, Ahmed Rajib Haider, known online
as Thaba Baba, and vowed to keep fighting.
“The
pen will remain active, will continue till the death of your belief,”
he wrote. “Get Islam destroyed, get Islam destroyed, get Islam
destroyed.”
A
writer using the name Biswaoy Balok, or Amazing Boy, responded in the
comments section: “Son of a dog, you will also be killed.”
The
deaths of Mr. Roy and Mr. Rhaman this month have sent a chilling
message to the country’s secular bloggers, who say they are competing
for the hearts and minds of young people exposed to oceans of material
promoting conservative Islam.
Mr.
Haider, Mr. Roy and Mr. Rhaman were all swept up in the 2013 Shahbag
movement, which called for the death penalty for Islamist political
leaders who were implicated in atrocities committed during the 1971 war
for independence from Pakistan. The movement was met with a passionate
response from young Islamist activists, deepening a divide among
members of the same generation over whether Bangladesh is, or should
be, a Muslim state.
Omi
Rahman Pial, another prominent blogger from the same group, said he
heard from five activists on Monday who said they were considering
seeking asylum outside Bangladesh. Arif Jebtik, another activist, said
that more “have begun shutting their blogs down” under pressure from
their families.
It has always been risky for Bangladeshi intellectuals to criticize
Islam, but when they fled the country, it used to be to avoid
prosecution, not extremist violence, said Sara Hossain, a Bangladeshi
supreme court lawyer.
“People
who have lived in conflict zones will describe how you move from being
a society where you attack people verbally and try to invoke the law
against them,” she said. “Now our society is increasingly going toward
one where you murder your enemies.”
Many people here had a mixed reaction to Mr. Roy’s death, condemning the violence but also taking issue with his views.
“Look,
93.2 percent of Bangladeshis are Muslim, and 80 percent of those are
against what he wrote,” said Abdullah Fahim, 22, a business student at
North South University, a private institution here. “I don’t know why
our government gave him the liberty to write against Islam.”
Monirul
Islam, a police official who is overseeing the investigation into Mr.
Roy’s death, said the police have seen a pattern of attacks on writers
and intellectuals. Those involved are often well-off, Internet-savvy
young people, he said, and not the impoverished men who typically
committed such crimes in the past. Mr. Islam said the attackers operate
in small groups and have been active so far in eight to 10 of the
country’s 64 districts.
“At this stage, their strategy is silent, targeted killing,” he said.
Though
the killing of Mr. Roy happened more than a month ago in a crowded
street full of witnesses, the police have so far made only one arrest —
Shafiur Rahman Farabi, who called for him to be murdered in a Facebook
post.
Mr.
Islam said Mr. Farabi “disclosed some information,” and that the police
have identified additional suspects, a group of men not directly
connected with Mr. Farabi. He said he believed more than five people
were involved, and that several of them probably attended North South
University.
The
authorities were luckier on Monday, when bystanders caught two men
trying to flee the scene; a third man escaped. In an exchange with
journalists, the two suspects seemed remorseless, according to Mohammad
Jamil Khan, a reporter for The Dhaka Tribune.
“They
were talking with me very happily, that they have done a good job by
killing the blogger,” Mr. Khan told the BBC. “They don’t feel any
guilt. They think they have done a very good job for their religion.”
Saudi liberal gets 10 years in jail, 1,000 lashes
By Staff Writer | Al Arabiya News
Thursday, 8 May 2014
A Saudi court sentenced Raef Badawi, the founder of a liberal Internet
forum, to 10 years in jail and 1,000 lashes Wednesday over allegations
of "insulting Islam.”
Badawi, was also ordered to pay a fine of one million riyals
($266,666/191,846 euros), the website’s co-founder Suad al-Shamari,
told AFP.
In August last year a court sentenced Badawi to seven years and three
months in jail in addition to 600 flogs “for establishing a liberal
website and adopting the liberal thinking and insulting Islam,”
according to Saudi media reports.
But a higher court overturned that decision and ordered a retrial by a different court.
Last month, a Saudi court in Jeddah ordered the permanent closure of
the website for publishing what was perceived as anti-Islamic content,
the Saudi news website Sabq reported.
Sabq said a number of Saudis had demanded the closure of the Saudi
Liberal Network for posting stories and comments that are considered
against religion and morality.
The website said the court’s decision “prompted good reactions by many
of those who had called for such an action and had filed lawsuits
against the network and its members.”
Man gets 5 years for insulting Islam on Facebook
The Jakarta Post, Bandung | Archipelago | Wed, January 23 2013
The Bandung High Court has added one more year to the prison term of
Sebastian Joe, who was sentenced to four years' imprisonment for the
blasphemy of Islam by the Ciamis District Court in West Java.
The high court decided on Tuesday to give Sebastian a higher sentence
as it used the 2008 Information and Electronic Transaction (ITE) Law as
a lex specialis (special law), instead of the Criminal Code (KUHP) used
by the district court, said Sebastian’s lawyer, Anang Fitriana, as
quoted by tempo.co on Wednesday.
Sebastian was reported by the Ciamis chapter of the Islam Defenders
Front (FPI) last year for a Facebook status he made, which they
considered insulting to Islam.
Anang said that he planned to appeal the case to the Supreme Court.
Nigeria rights group to appeal Facebook ruling
By Randy Fabi
Reuters
Wednesday, March 24, 2010; 12:40 PM
ABUJA (Reuters) - A Nigerian civil rights group said Wednesday it would
appeal an Islamic court order to shut down its chat forums on Facebook
and Twitter which criticize the practice of Islamic law in northern
states.
An Islamic court in the northern city of Kaduna Monday ruled for the
Association of the Muslim Brotherhood of Nigeria, which sought to
censor debate on the social networking sites over an amputation case
that occurred 10 years ago.
The Civil Rights Congress began the debate on Facebook and Twitter last
week, asking members their opinions over the amputation of a peasant
farmer's hand in March 2000 after he was convicted by an Islamic court
for stealing a cow.
Shehu Sani, the group's president, said he started the discussion to
highlight what he believes is the unfair practice of sharia law by
Nigeria's northern states.
"Sharia law seems to only apply to the poor and downtrodden. It is
wrong that this farmer's hand was amputated, while politicians steal
hundreds of millions of dollars without being punished," he said.
The rights group is expected to appeal the ruling to an upper sharia court Monday.
"We condemn the ruling and reject it. We think it is a violation of our freedom of expression," Sani said.
Africa's most populous nation is roughly equally divided between a mainly Muslim north and largely Christian south.
More than 200 ethnic groups generally live peacefully side by side but
there have been regular outbreaks of violence, particularly in the
"Middle Belt" separating the north and south, where sectarian clashes
have killed hundreds this year. Islamic jurisprudence in Nigeria is
based on the moderate Maliki school of Sunni Islam.
The enforcement of sharia law in 12 of Nigeria's 36 states in 2000
alienated sizeable Christian minorities in the north and sparked
clashes which killed thousands.
Egypt Blogger Begins Prison Sentence For "Insulting" Islam ; Christians Attacked
Journal Chretien
February 27, 2007
CAIRO, EGYPT — A young Egyptian blogger who criticized Muslim violence against
Coptic Christians was behind bars Friday, February 23, after being sentenced to
four years imprisonment for "insulting" Islam, "inciting sectarian strife" and
"defaming" President Hosni Mubarak with his Internet writings.
Abdel Kareem Nabil, a 22-year-old former student at Egypt’s Al-Azhar University, had been a vocal secularist and sharp critic of radical Muslims in his blog. Nabil, who used the blogger name Kareem Amer, often lashed out at Al-Azhar - the most prominent religious center in Sunni Islam - calling it "the university of terrorism" and accusing it of encouraging extremism.
Judge Ayman al-Akazi of a court in the city of Alexandria sentenced Nabil to three years in prison for "insulting Islam and the Prophet Muhammad" and "inciting sectarian strife" and another year for "insulting President" Mubarak.
He said Nabil insulted the Prophet Muhammad especially with a piece he wrote in 2005 after riots in which angry Muslim worshippers attacked a Coptic Christian church over a play deemed offensive to Islam.
"UGLY FACE"
"Muslims revealed their true ugly face and appeared to all the world that they are full of brutality, barbarism and inhumanity," Nabil wrote at the time. He called Muhammad and his 7th century followers, the Sahaba, "spillers of blood" for their teachings on warfare - a comment cited by the judge. However court observers also noted that the judge overlooked Nabil’s clarification of the comments. He said Muhammad was "great" but that his teachings on warfare and other issues should be viewed as a product of their times.
In other writings, he reportedly called Al-Azhar the "other face of the coin of [terror network] al-Qaida" and called for the university to be dissolved or turned into a secular institution. He also criticized President Mubarak, calling him "the symbol of tyranny."
Nabil’s lawyer, Ahmed Seif el-Islam, said he would appeal the verdict. He and human rights groups also warned that the sentencing could have "a negative impact on freedom of expression" in Egypt. "This sentence is yet another slap in the face of freedom of expression in Egypt," said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Middle East and North Africa Deputy Program Director of human rights group Amnesty International (AI) in a statement to BosNewsLife.
"The Egyptian authorities must protect the peaceful exercise of freedom of expression, even if the views expressed might be perceived by some as offensive." The official said AI considers the blogger "a prisoner of conscience who is being prosecuted on account of the peaceful expression" of his views. AI urged Egypt to "repeal legislation that, in violation of international standards, stipulates prison sentences for acts which constitute nothing more than the peaceful exercise of the rights of freedom of expression, thought, conscience and religion."
"SLAP AND SCREAM"
Nabil, sitting in the defendant’s pen, did not react as the verdict was read and made no comments as he was led to a prison truck outside, eyewitnesses said. Seconds after the door was closed, an Associated Press agency reporter claimed to have heard "a slap from inside the truck and a scream."
Last year another Internet writer, Hala Helmy Botros, was forced to close down her blog Aqbat Bela Hodood, or ’Copts Without Borders’ about the plight of Copts and to stop writing on this subject for other websites. Botros, who is in her 40s, wrote under the pseudonym of Hala El-Masry and became the target of a judicial investigation and was banned from leaving the country, BosNewsLife learned.
Thursday’s sentencing of Nabil came amid growing religious tensions between Muslims and minority Christians in Egypt. This month police reportedly detained Christian families in Upper Egypt and forced them to deny arson attacks on their homes during a spate of anti-Christian violence last week.
Two Coptic Orthodox families said police detained them for 36 hours when they attempted to report a February 13 assault on their homes in Armant, 600 kilometers (373 miles) south of Cairo. The fires came five days after Muslim groups set four Christian-owned shops alight on February 9.
International media said reports of a love affair between a Christian man and Muslim woman sparked the violence, but local media said hostilities broke out over accusations that Christians were blackmailing Muslim women to convert.