Malaysian jailed 10 years for insulting Islam on social media
KUALA LUMPUR • A Malaysian has been jailed for 10 years, and three others charged over insults against Islam and Prophet Muhammad on social media, the police said yesterday.
The sentence is believed to be the harshest such penalty on record in the Muslim-majority country, where concerns over racial and religious tensions have grown in recent months.
Inspector-General of Police Mohamad Fuzi Harun said in a statement that the person, who was not identified, had pleaded guilty to 10 charges of misusing communication networks. The offence carries a maximum penalty of one year in jail or a fine of up to RM50,000 (S$16,600), or both.
The sentences were meted out consecutively, Tan Sri Mohamad Fuzi said.
Utusan Malaysia newspaper identified the man as 22-year old Alister Cogia from Sarawak, which used the Facebook account Ayea Yea, which has apparently been shut down.
Another social media user had also pleaded guilty and a sentencing hearing will be held tomorrow.
Two others had pleaded not guilty and were being held without bail.
All four were charged under laws against causing racial disharmony, incitement and misusing communications networks.
"The police advise the public not to abuse social media or communication networks by uploading or sharing any form of provocation that can affect religious or racial sensitivities, causing racial tensions within this country's diverse community," Mr Mohamad Fuzi said.
Last Thursday, Minister in Charge of Religious Affairs Mujahid Yusof Rawa said the Islamic Affairs Department had set up a unit to monitor writings and communications insulting Islam and Prophet Muhammad.
He said the ministry would not compromise on any acts insulting the religion and called for punishments against those found guilty of such.
Meanwhile, reacting to the sentence on Sunday (March 10), the adviser to the Democratic Action Party (DAP), MP Lim Kit Siang, described the 10-year punishment as "excessive" and said the person involved should appeal to the court for a lighter sentence.
"All Malaysians must uphold the Constitution and respect all religions in Malaysia but there must be no excessive punishments like the 10-year jail sentence by the Kuching Sessions Court for a social media holder for insulting Islam and Prophet Mohamad," said Mr Lim in his blog. The DAP is one of the four parties that make up the ruling Pakatan Harapn coalition.
"As advised by the de facto deputy law minister, Hanipa Maidin, the social media holder should appeal against the decision," Mr Lim added.
REUTERS
Barely a week later, this happened:
Malaysia deports six Egyptians despite concerns over torture, rights abuses
KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia has deported six Egyptians and a Tunisian suspected of being linked to extremist militant groups abroad.
The suspects include five people who confessed to being part of Egypt’s banned Muslim Brotherhood, Inspector-General of Police Mohamad Fuzi Harun said in a statement on Sunday.
The Tunisian and one of the Egyptians deported were members of Ansar Al-Sharia Al-Tunisia, which is listed as a terrorist group by the United Nations, Mohamad Fuzi said.
The two, both in their early 20s, had previously been detained for attempting to enter another country illegally in 2016. They allegedly used fake passports to enter Malaysia with the intention of traveling to and launching an attack in a third country, police said.
“Members of this terror group are suspected of being involved in plans to carry out large-scale attacks in other countries,” Mohamad Fuzi said.
The other five Egyptians confessed to being members of the Muslim Brotherhood, and are accused of providing shelter, transport and employment for the two linked to Ansar Al-Sharia.
“As the presence of these foreigners constitute a security risk, all suspects have been deported to their native country and... recommendations have been made to blacklist them from entering Malaysia for life,” Mohamad Fuzi said, adding that two Malaysians were detained in the counter-terror operation.
However, Amnesty International Malaysia said the Egyptians deported were now at risk of enforced disappearance, torture, prolonged detention and unfair trials.
“We urge the Malaysian government to respect the principle of non-refoulement and ensure that those at risk of persecution or risk of irreparable harm in another country, including torture, are not deported,” said the group’s executive director Shamini Darshni Kaliemuthu.
Malaysia has arrested hundreds of people in the past few years for suspected links to militant groups, after gunmen allied with Daesh carried out a series of attacks in Jakarta, the capital of neighboring Indonesia, in January 2016.
A grenade attack on a bar on the outskirts of the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur, in June 2016 wounded eight people. Daesh claimed responsibility for the attack, the first such strike on Malaysian soil.
Both reports are sourced from Reuters. As you may have noticed, Amnesty International spoke out against the deportation of Egyptian nationals suspected of having links to radical Islamist terror groups. In sharp contrast, not one word has been uttered by Amnesty regarding the plight of the Malaysian who was jailed for TEN WHOLE YEARS for the “crime” of “insulting Islam”, nor has there been any indication as to exactly what he wrote on Facebook that was purportedly so offensive. Terrorists apparently have more rights than peaceful and genuine prisoners of conscience.
Alister Cogia has also been ordered to undergo mental observation. Criticizing religion and exercising one’s right to free speech is considered a sign of mental illness these days. It brings up memories of the Soviet Union’s political abuse of psychiatry. The Malaysian government has also moved to establish an ombudsman to look into such alleged “insults against Islam” on social media and elsewhere. No such ombudsman exists for any other religion.
Bear in mind that despite the recent transition to democracy last year, a culture of censoriousness persists when it comes to alleged insults against race and religion, and this attitude prevails not only among Muslims, but among most ordinary Malaysians of all races and religions much like it does in Singapore, although Muslims seem to be the most easily offended, and laws restricting so-called hate speech in Malaysia continue to be mainly applied in a one-sided manner against those, primarily non-Malays and non-Muslims, who “insult” Malays and Islam and less often the other way around.
I strongly suspect that this sentiment also prevails in other so-called Third World democracies such as India and Nigeria. Such countries have experienced racial and sectarian violence in the past and possess similarly repressive laws despite their democratic credentials. It seems that Third World denizens are either such snowflakes that they would riot and kill over a perceived slight, or they are otherwise fearful of history repeating itself. Religion, according to them, is sacrosanct and above reproach. I say fuck that and fuck religion. They’re the ones who choose to be offended and commit acts of violence over words and cartoons. This attitude also effectively discriminates against atheists and freethinkers alike, since we don’t have a religion to threaten and silence other people with.
In my opinion, the Left, for all its talk of equality, human rights and compassion, cannot be trusted to uphold the basic rights of Third World denizens like myself any more than the Right can, and I would take everything they say with an extremely big pinch of salt. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Avaaz have maintained a deafening silence over the case I mentioned above for several weeks now. The Left is guilty of staggering hypocrisy in this regard, all in the name of owning right-wing conservatives in the West. They only care about free speech if it suits their intersectional, Islamist-apologist narrative, else ex-Muslim atheist Ayaan Hirsi Ali and liberal Muslim reformer and counter-extremism activist Maajid Nawaz would be the darlings of the Left, and they wouldn’t be turning their backs on liberal-minded Malaysians and other people across the developing world who are “woke” and “redpilled” to liberal, Western ideals, whether via the internet or through time spent living in a Western country.
Instead, both Hirsi Ali and Nawaz have been listed by the SPLC as “anti-Muslim extremists”. Any criticism of Islam, and only Islam and no other religion, is considered racist and bigoted, and if Third World critics of Islam are locked up in their home countries, tough shit. A sick joke and a shitshow is what the Left has devolved into over the past decade, so much so I’ve been forced to stop calling myself “leftwing” in recent years.
The formerly liberal Left, in collusion with far-right stealth Islamists, has betrayed certain types of Third Worlders like myself for daring to go against the (religious, predominantly Islamic) grain in our own, backward societies. This sense of betrayal is not something I feel coming from rightwing conservatives, because the Western Right has never even pretended to care, and I have always disagreed with them, sometimes strongly, on many issues. The Left has also turned its back on fiercely antireligious New Atheists like myself who are critical of Islam for the exact same reasons. Ex-Muslim atheists have it even worse, and they are either ignored or vilified by the Left and a number of far-right stealth Islamist allies for peddling “Islamophobia”.
If I were to say the kinds of things, namely legitimate criticism, that Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and Ayaan Hirsi Ali have said about Islam, would I be prosecuted for “insulting Islam”, “hate speech” and “inciting racial and religious disharmony”? Would I be labeled as “mentally ill”, like Alister Cogia has been, by a large percentage of my countrymen simply for being extremely Westernized and holding certain views not common among most Malaysians? Some of my peers IRL have already privately labeled me as such. Would I be sentenced to ten years in prison and ordered to see a so-called shrink for “counseling”? And if that happens, will Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, Avaaz and the Western Left have my back? Would Antifa have my back?
I suspect the answers to these questions would be yes and no respectively. Antifa (not NS Antifa) has chapters all across the Western world, but if such a chapter exists in Malaysia, I haven’t heard of it. I have yet to encounter Malaysian members of Antifa physically confronting the far-right Malay and Muslim fascists in the streets of Kuala Lumpur. Antifa only goes after white supremacists it seems, and many of their targets e.g. Tucker Carlson aren't even that.
I fear the recent Christchurch white supremacist terror attacks will only harden the resolve among certain “hate speech is not free speech” leftists and far-right Islamic fundamentalists to crack down even further on freedom of expression in the name of maintaining “racial and religious harmony” and “national security”. The internet will undoubtedly be impacted, no matter where in the world we live. I think we have to push back hard against this chilling rollback of freedom of expression by certain quarters before it suffocates us all. Radical leftists and Islamists alike have no right to dictate what constitutes “hate speech” and what doesn’t, and the same applies to Malaysians, Singaporeans and other Third World denizens who urgently need to change their mindset. (Yes, I know Singapore’s a developed country, but still.)
But in the interests of not turning this thread into a blog, my questions to NSG are as follows:
Should Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Avaaz and other NGOs be called out for not doing enough to uphold free speech both online and offline, in the West and in the developing world, or even allegedly undermining their very own stated cause? Should they be called out for caring more about the rights of terrorists than those of ordinary people like myself simply for having an opinion about a religion?
Do you think that perceived “insults” against race and religion, particularly Islam, should be prosecuted with say, a ten-year jail sentence and mental health “counseling”, or is such an approach something to be decried and condemned as generally repressive and specifically discriminatory toward atheists? Do you think that Muslims are more prone to subscribing to such a restrictive ideal than followers of other religions or none? Or do you think that outspoken individuals who are critical of religion should be hailed as prisoners of conscience by the so-called human rights NGOs mentioned in the previous question? Should there be a Write for Rights campaign for Alister Cogia this December (or earlier)?
Should Muslims and adherents of other faiths be called out for being so intolerant and easily offended?
Finally, has the Left, specifically the intersectional Third Wave feminist Western Left, turned its back on free speech, atheists (particularly ex-Muslim atheists) and critics of Islam, even when it involves people being sentenced to ten years in prison and mental health “counseling” for a perceived slight against a particular religion that, IMO, is worthy of absolutely nothing but mockery and ridicule precisely because of what happened to this guy, and because of what is contained in the holy texts (a topic for the IDT; please don’t derail the thread) and the intolerant behavior of a large percentage of its followers? Is the Western Left guilty of hypocrisy for pretending to uphold the human rights of minorities and other prisoners of conscience around the world, only to turn a blind eye whenever someone is prosecuted for “hate speech” against a particular religion in a foreign country i.e. mine? Is the Left only interested in scoring political points against Western, rightwing conservatives at the expense of all else? Has the Left abandoned liberalism and all that it stands for?
