ICC Note:

Nahed Hattar was shot outside a Jordanian court before he stood trial for contempt of religion after sharing a cartoon deemed offensive towards Islam. Witnesses said the gunman was dressed in the attire worn by ultra conservative Sunni Salafis. Government officials have condemned the attack and say they will pursue the culprit with “an iron fist.” Unfortunately, this incident demonstrates the danger of blasphemy laws in the Middle East. Blasphemy laws make it illegal to criticize or dishonor religious symbols, but it only applies to Islam in practice. While Jordan has relatively moderate blasphemy laws practices compared to the other Islamic countries, Christians are still persecuted for countering Islam.      

09/26/2016 Jordan (ABC News) – A Jordanian Christian writer has been shot dead outside the court where he was to stand trial for sharing a cartoon deemed offensive to Islam, the Jordanian state news agency Petra has reported.

Nahed Hattar, a Christian and an anti-Islamist activist who was a supporter of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, was arrested on August 13 on charges of contempt of religion and inciting sectarian strife, after he shared a caricature that depicted a bearded man in heaven smoking in bed with women, asking God to bring him wine and cashews.

Authorities said he violated the law by widely sharing the caricature.

The illustration was titled “God of Daesh”, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group.

The 56-year-old removed the cartoon from his Facebook page and apologised for posting it after it triggered outrage on social media, with many conservative Muslim Jordanians considering it offensive and against their religion.

He said he had shared the cartoon to make fun of “terrorists and how they imagine God and heaven, and does not insult God in any way”, and accused his Islamist opponents of using the cartoon to settle scores with him.

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