Egyptian student jailed for proclaiming that he is an atheist

[cbayer]

http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2015/jan/13/egyptian-student-jailed-for-proclaiming-that-he-is-an-atheist

Karim Ashraf Mohamed al-Banna is sentenced to three years on blasphemy charges for Facebook entry


Karim Ashraf Mohamed al-Banna was arrested at a cafe in Cairo in 2014. Photograph: Robert Harding World Imagery

Roy Greenslade
Tuesday 13 January 2015 09.45 GMT

It is dangerous in Egypt nowadays not to conform. If you support the Muslim Brotherhood you could end up joining many hundreds of Islamists in jail.

If you are a journalist, as the al-Jazeera staff know well, jail is a real possibility. Now it appears that if you are an atheist, you could well be jailed too.

A student has been sentenced to three years in prison for announcing on Facebook that he was an atheist and thereby “insulting Islam”. Karim Ashraf Mohamed al-Banna, aged 21, was arrested in November 2014 with a group of other people at a cafe in Cairo.

Police then closed down the so-called “atheists cafe” in what is being viewed as a coordinated government crackdown on atheists. A local administrator told a news website that the coffee shop was “known as a place for satan worship, rituals and dances”.

more at link

[Fumesucker]

1. It's perfectly safe to be an atheist in Egypt or any other Muslim society

All you have to do is never voice your heretical and apostate thoughts, is that so hard?

[cbayer]

2. This really flies in the face of the Egyptian president's recent proclamations about

how Islam needs a revolution and his stand against islamic extremism.

[AtheistCrusader]

3. I'm sure this has nothing to do with religion. This is just politics.

( )

[trotsky]

4. Ding ding ding!

You win! Because, as we've been told, it's NEVER about religion!