Blogger Arrested For Insulting Islam.

No, I would not be willing to go to prison for a blog. It is hard to decide if this guy is a hero or a fool. I suppose that if his going to prison actually changes anything, he is a hero, if not, a fool. In either case, I respect and admire him for standing up for what he believes. I just could not do this, myself.

Saviour-V teleports in... As a fellow Malaysian, I'm compelled to speak up about this. Raja Petra was NOT detained for religious reasons. His detainment was merely politically motivated. As of right now, a certain Anwar Ibrahim is currently trying to wrest power away from our ruling government, and there are many who support his cause, Raja Petra inclusive. Our current ruling party, the Barisan Nasional, or Unified Front, was responsible for a number of nasty foul-ups over the past few years. A more recent mess-up was the fuel price hike from Ringgit Malaysia 1.92 per litre to a whopping Ringgit Malaysia 2.70 per litre, back in August. Of course, even before then, many people, bloggers and activists alike, had voiced out their criticisms of the government, and during our main elections in March, very nearly managed to obtain victory over BN. Things have been heating up lately since then. Back to Raja Petra. I have read a few of his articles on occasion, and if you ask me, they're more thought-provoking than religion-provoking. Because we, the people of Malaysia, have been following orders from our current government for far too long, we've forgotten about how to think for ourselves. Raja Petra, like many others here, only sought to restore our self-esteem, and our honour. But apparently, as in many other places, stick out too much, and you'll get stepped on. And the Internal Security Act, once used against Anwar Ibrahim to detain him for almost 10 years, has been used unfairly once more. Of course, there have been many cases of this act being used unlawfully in the past. Therefore, WhatsHerName, not to be disrespectful, but I think you should re-analyze things more carefully before you speak about them. On a more recent case, a prominent politician by the name of Teresa Kok (also, previously detained under the ISA a few weeks ago) was threatened with a unlit petrol bomb, tossed into her parents' home, a few days ago. While the message on the bomb accused her of being anti-Islamic and a rabble-rouser, she's nothing like that. In fact, it was due to her efforts that we prevented a nasty confrontation with China...but that is a story for another time. Saviour-V salutes WhatsHerName, and teleports out as usual...

You should not have to go to jail for saying what you think, but sadly some countries do not believe in freedom of speech. Personally, if I lived in a country where I could not say what I want to say, I would say it anyway and I would not care what happens because that is how I feel. If we were not able to say how we feel or what we want, how would our society, and humans in general, develop? We need our ideas and we need our freedom to speak.

thank heaven i live in a country where at least for the present i have the gift of freedom of speech or I would be under the jail LOL

Islam is Truth & God System's Please Don't Inter fail & Stop Fun Of God system If you Inter Fail Humanity will Kill You arrest you Islam is the Great & biggest religion Have own rules I have no more time to follow & listen Your Fake Rules So If Any one Make fun of & Insult Islam it's our right we will kill his or her Ok?? here many are non-religious type Christan's Have no sense & not education about & religions & start Discussion

have you heard about gitmo? people are arrested not for insulting anything they are arrested for "being" muslims. what about iraq? people are "killed" for being "muslims" their whole country destroyed for oil. and by who? the president of the freedome of speech and democracy country. what you do is try to blind people and corrupt their views. that won't happen

I can understand why moderate Muslim folks aren't willing to stick their neck out (gulp). And I don't think I'd be willing to stick mine out either! (If I could avoid it.)

This is a clear illustration of lack of religious freedom in certain countries. People should be free to criticise whatever religion they would like to. There should be a clear distinction between religious law and governement laws.

Well then I guess I would have been in jail a long time ago if we had such a retarded law in this country. I'm sorry but if I feel something about a group, person, religion or whatever I'm going to say it, positive or negitive. I'm not about to blow sunshine bubbles up someone's butt just so they can feel better about crap. Frankly I'm not a fan of Islam and rank them up there with the kool-aid cults and the give me all your money zealots. I think a lot of them are seriously wacked out in the head and need to be isolated from normal people for the saftey of themselves and others. What pisses me off is they are trying to push teaching that crap in schools here in the states yet kids can't have a bible club anymore. WTF. It's ok to teach them Islam but they can't learn about Judisim,Christianity,Buddism, or Paganism in school. Um I don't think so. If you're gonna teach one teach em all or leave them the hell out of public schools.

If we could get arrested for insulting islam in the U.S., I would have been in jail a long time ago...

Nobody wants to go to prison for sure for whatever reason whether your guilty or not. If it's illegal in that person's country then he has no choice but go to jail. He needs to be more sensitive and conscious.

and we have to think that Malaysia is one of the more "liberal" islam state...freedom and sharia do not pass toghether at all..

And that's where you called it Malaysia. We can't talk about Islam but they are allowed to speak on other races? They denied the truth and they say some of the races here are immigrant while they are the one who is not pure Malaysian. If the other races are not Malaysian, they are also not. Only the pure native people are pure Malaysian. They didn't say a word.

hi whatshername... raja petra, commented on the current political turmoil in malaysia... which indirectly involves "native people" and their rights.. he only questioned "being a Muslim, and reading quran how can you do injustece to the non muslims " this people read the sentence as an attack towards islam n their rights being questioned... he has been a muslim voice for the non-muslims btw, guess your star is getting lower, mine too cheers

It sounds like this law that you cannot insult Islam is an excuse because he linked the deputy prime minister with the murder of a Mongolian woman. It sounds more like racism raising its ugly head and this insulting Islam is an excuse. I could not see the actual crime unless he said that the deputy prime minister was acting as a heretic or the other members of parliament were not upholding the standards of Islam. But there was no specifications on how he insulted it. I saw no statement where he said things like Mohammed being a pedophile or Muslims are lazy, or they cannot get people to convert to Islam willingly - I am sure that if I were a Muslim and heard that, I would get that person arrested. Would I be willing to go to jail for a blog? Well being a Christian and stood up for my faith, and the government wanted me to keep silent, but I did not, I would.

arresting under internal security act being applied to insulting. really funny country this malaysia. how can insulting islam lead to tarning the country's leadership and causing confusion among the people? are muslims so confused that if someone insults they apply the internal security act to deal with it. ISA is supposed to be applied during terrorist or disruptive acts, not for silly acts like insulting or writing a derogatory article in ones website. shame shame malaysia.

Please read my response from the end of page one, it won't let me copy and paste and I don't feel like retyping it.

Too bad the first amendment makes that completely untrue.