A sign of the times in Turkey:
One of Turkey’s most popular websites, the satirical Sour Dictionary (Eksi Sozluk), is on trial for insulting religion. Forty contributing writers have been charged following a complaint by popular Islamic figure Adnan Oktar. The trial kıcked off Jan. 14 with 27 of the defendants in attendance.
Oktar, in his complaint to the prosecutor, claimed that some entries in the dictionary included comments that amounted to insults of religion and prophets. The entries he cited and for which the prosecutor eventually pressed charges include jokes that the Prophet Muhammad and Allah had “sent money” to Turkey’s Housing Development Administration and that Jesus Christ and religious people were of low intelligence. Other examples include an entry on suggestions for a 100th name for Allah in addition to the 99 names Muslims have for their god and another titled “Allah’s official sponsors.”...
A string of similar legal cases in recent years indicate that accusations of insulting religion, especially Islam, is being used with increasing ease and frequency to press criminal charges. Emma Sinclair-Webb, a Turkey researcher for Human Rights Watch, says that the trials point to a new trend. What was once an epidemic of cases of “insulting Turkishness” are now being replaced by those of “insulting religion.”
Adnan Oktar, aka Harun Yahya, is the megalomaniac cultist behind The Atlas of Creation, his lavishly-produced magnum opus which claims to have finally defeated Darwinism. In 2010 he was selected as one of the top fifty of The 500 Most Influential Muslims in the World by the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre of Jordan, for his dissemination of creationism in an Islamic context, and other extensively distributed publications on Islamic topics. He also, unsurprisingly, dabbles in Holocaust denial and various anti-semitic and Freemasonry-related conspiracy theories.
These people never explain why their all-powerful god needs the protection of earthly laws. Couldn't he deal with miscreants himself with a well-directed thunderbolt?
Posted by: Bob-B | February 08, 2014 at 07:52 AM