Christian convicted for insulting Islam in Egypt, receives 1 year of hard labor

There is no freedom of speech under Islam

An Egyptian court has convicted a Coptic Christian lawyer in the southern province of Assiut on charges of blasphemy and sentenced him to one year in prison with hard labor.

The verdict against Roman Murad Saad was handed down on Saturday. It’s the latest in a surge of blasphemy cases following Egypt’s 2011 uprising reports the Washington Times.
.
Saad was sentenced in absentia. If he’s arrested or surrenders to authorities, he will be given a retrial and will have to pay 10,000 Egyptians pounds (around $1,400) in fines.

Court officials say Saad was found guilty of ridiculing Islam’s holy book, the Quran, at a lawyers’ union library. No further details were immediately available in the case.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to media.

_______________________________

Muslim Brotherhood cleric calls for Sunni Jihad in Syria


The spiritual mentor of the worldwide Muslim Brotherhood movement has risked further inflaming sectarian tension across the Middle East by using highly charged religious rhetoric to call for a Sunni "jihad" in Syria.

Yusef al-Qaradawi, who is based in Qatar and has been a leading voice supporting the Arab Spring, warned that Iranian Shia were trying to "eat" Sunni Muslims, who are a majority in the Muslim world.

He referred to Alawites, the followers of the Muslim sect to which President Bashar al-Assad of Syria belongs, as being "worse infidels than Christians or Jews". He also used the deliberately contemptuous term "Nusayris" when talking about them reports the UK Telegraph.

He was particularly critical of the roles played by Iran, which is largely Shia, and the Lebanon Shia militia Hizbollah whose name translates as Party of God but which he called "Party of Satan", in supporting the Assad regime.

"There is no common ground between the two sides because the Iranians, especially conservatives, want to eat the Sunni people," he said.

The Syrian opposition is dominated, like Syria itself, by Sunni Muslims, but also includes a number of Christians, Alawites and other minorities.

In recent days, a number of Shia shrines have been attacked and desecrated in rebel-held territory, including the tombs of Ammar ibn Yasir in Raqqa and of Hujr bin Uday al-Kindi near Damascus.

Alawite leaders have openly called for Sunni areas to be "cleansed" - coinciding with attacks by Alawite militias on civilian Sunni towns near Baniyas which killed 300 people.