Malaysia Frees "Anti-Islamic" Blogger 53
quarterbuck writes "The Malaysian blogger who was under arrest on sedition charges has been freed by the courts. Raja Petra Kamarudin's comments were interpreted by the government as being anti-Islam and anti-government; he was arrested under Malaysia's Internal Security Act. Now, a court has ruled that the government was overstepping its limits in what is being called a landmark ruling."
Re:Speaking freely (Score:5, Informative)
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A previous charge of sedition is still pending against the blogger.
...
When the Internal Security Act was introduced in 1960, the government said it would be used to protect people "from Communist subversion."
Sounds like Malaysia is still enjoying the good old days of McCarthyism.
Re:Speaking freely (Score:4, Informative)
The "anti-islamic" comment is not mine
I don't believe this has anything to do with religion, most developing nations use religion, public order, morality etc. as an excuse for authoritarianism.
I do hope that it will change and that freer communications and exposure to the rest of the world is a factor in bringing about cultural change, not just change to internet.
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Parent is exactly right. Insulting religion is an easy excuse and makes for an easy target to charge someone in this country when nothing else sticks. The actual reasons are entirely political.
What was left unsaid is that RPK was a persistent thorn in the side of the present government: he has published an ongoing series called 'The Khairy Chronicles' about the allerged corruption and abuse of power of the outgoing prime minister's son-in-law (PM Abdullah Badawi, now being forced out), and have publicized m
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Speaking freely is un-Islamic.
Treating women with respect is un-Islamic.
Freedom is un-Islamic.
Peace is un-Islamic.
It wasn't that long ago that all of those things you mention were un-Christian.
Re:Speaking freely (Score:4, Insightful)
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"Christians somehow managed to learn a little tolerance."
Now if only they could learn just a bit more ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_8_(2008)
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Speaking freely is un-Islamic.
Treating women with respect is un-Islamic.
Freedom is un-Islamic.
Peace is un-Islamic.
It wasn't that long ago that all of those things you mention were un-Christian.
It wasn't that long ago that all of those things were un-Everything (un-British, un-Hindu, un-African, un-Whatever). That's just the way things were everywhere until fairly recently. Maybe you and the parent should keep the broadbrush in its holster a little longer next time.
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What the hell are you even getting at?
Re:Speaking freely (Score:4, Insightful)
It wasn't that long ago that all of those things you mention were un-Christian.
And the un-Christian part has not changed much. What has changed is Christianity being separated from Government. Put them in charge and they'll bring back the dark ages.
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Indeed - in the UK, it was only in the last year that we finally repealed the Christian Blasphemy law, after someone tried to sue the BBC using it.
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The Roman Catholic Church had the Inquisition starting in the 1200s to persecute heresy, which the Popes saw as a threat to their power in Europe.
Women only "recently" gained equal rights. In 1979, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women [wikipedia.org] was passed by the United Nations. Not exactly a long standing history of women right
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I'm an atheist, but I've only became one after I read and learned as much as I can about the religions that are out there. And I can safely say that every sentence in your post is a flat-out lie.
Speaking freely is un-Islamic.
False. Free speech and debate is, and has always been, encouraged in Islam. As a matter of fact, the lack of it was what gave Islam such a hard time in its beginning. (Don't confuse free speech with random insults though, they're different.)
Treating women with respect is un-Islamic.
Quite the opposite. Islam was rejected in Mecca because it respected women.
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Also, Islam is the _first_ law in history that gives women a share of inheritance.
That's not quite correct. Check out Numbers 27:1-11... sure, the daughters only get something if there aren't any sons, but that's hardly reason to discount this incident entirely.
The daughters of Zelophehad son of Hepher, the son of Gilead, the son of Makir, the son of Manasseh, belonged to the clans of Manasseh son of Joseph. The names of the daughters were Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah and Tirzah. They approached the entrance to the Tent of Meeting and stood before Moses, Eleazar the priest, the leaders
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Speaking freely is un-Islamic.
False. Free speech and debate is, and has always been, encouraged in Islam. As a matter of fact, the lack of it was what gave Islam such a hard time in its beginning. (Don't confuse free speech with random insults though, they're different.)
Treating women with respect is un-Islamic.
Quite the opposite. Islam was rejected in Mecca because it respected women. Before it came, families would bury [wikipedia.org] their babies alive if they discovered they were girls. Also, Islam is the _first_ law in history that gives women [wikipedia.org] a share of inheritance. Books can be written about respect for women in Islam, but this isn't the place.
Freedom is un-Islamic.
How so if the atonement of pretty much most of the major sins in Islam is freeing [wikipedia.org] a slave? That's 1172 years before the the Slave Trade Act. Many of the very first muslims were slaves and their masters tortured them just for that.
Peace is un-Islamic.
That doesn't even make sense... Muslims had to have a military, just like EVERY OTHER JOE-KINGDOM AND ITS SISTER JANE-EMPIRE HAD ONE. Without one they would all die. It's as simple as that.
You look like you're confusing Islam-the-religion with government-regimes-that-happen-to-have-a-muslim-majority-and-therefore-claim-to-muslim.
You keep pointing back to the early days of Islam. Yes, maybe back then, compared to the environment around it, Islam was progressive. But what about today? Shari'a law? The church running the state? Stoning of rape victims in stadiums? Threats of murder and bombings over a cartoon of Mohammed? Women having to cover their faces in public, being expected to walk N steps behind their men? Doesn't sound all that progressive to me.
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Free speech and debate is, and has always been, encouraged in Islam.
So, preaching that Islam is a religion based on a false prophet is ok then, right?
(Don't confuse free speech with random insults though, they're different.)
Bullshit. Being able to offend somebody is the hallmark of free speech.
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I think that this singular sentence is wholly representative of the level of civilization, sophistication and understanding that Western peoples have achieved.
200 years of civil development, a war of independence, a civil war to free slaves and a current war supposedly to defend freedom and what is the pinnacle achievement of your society's developmental process?
The right to call me a jerk.
Please stop exporting "American Culture" to the rest of th
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The right to call me a jerk.
Yes, that's right. It also means I can criticize your religion, government policy, or whatever else somebody in power mind find "offensive".
Please stop exporting "American Culture" to the rest of the world. A bunch of spear weilding African bushmen would have a higher level of civilization than you do.
I find this statement insulting and offensive. Please report to the nearest re-education camp.
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You in turn are confusing Islam-as-it's-actually-practiced with pie-in-the-sky-utopian-Islam-that-doesn't-exist.
Your vision of Islam is as ridiculous as a vision of Christianity where every believer gives away all their worldly posessions and goes around inviting people to slap them on the cheek all the time.
A religion is what people actually do with it, not some fa
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Blogger's blog (Score:2)
Really, though, I'm not too sure how relevant the article is to Slashdot - how many countries have an Internal Security Act that allows the government to detain anyone, without trial, for as long as it wants? And among countries that do - both Malaysia's and Singapore's governments reaffirmed their intention to retain the acts this year, so it's not going to go away soon (the opposition in M'sia is a coalition that includes the radical Isla
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Re:Blogger's blog (Score:4, Interesting)
Apart from Malaysia, Britain's probably the worst - luckily the Neues Arbeit administration was stopped from extending detention to 42 days from 28, but guess what?
The very next day, Wacqui Jacqui Schmidt (our truly imbecilic Home Secretary) tabled legislation that would allow 42 days to be voted for by the House of Commons, "in an emergency".
Even places like Turkey restrict detention without charge or trial to 7 days - why is my country different?
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Even places like Turkey restrict detention without charge or trial to 7 days - why is my country different?
Because, probably like my country, they need that much time to work through the bureaucratic gridlock that is figuring out how to proceed with such ambiguous charges. I mean, you have a murderer, you know you gotta produce evidence, time, place, etc. You know what you need to charge him and keep him in your hands.
With this ambiguous new crime of "terrorism", it's too broad to define what you need to "nail'em" and get your desired outcome. You got a lot of circumstantial evidence probably, not a lot of previ
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Nope - even for terrorism charges in Turkey, it's still 7 days.
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Yikes. Confusing Nouns! I meant that whatever country the poster lived in. Not necces. Turkey. Sorry about that.
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Unfortunately, I live in Britain, and have seen our civil liberties under attack from the idiocracy that is New Labour ever since before 11/9/01.
The 28 days was an increase over the (IIRC) 14 days that was voted on every year in Parliament, and was seen as adequate for fighting IRA terrorism - there is no sensible argument for more than the original 14 days, but the fear-mongering plays well with the press, so New Labour assiduously pursue extensions to the detention period.
One day, we (the British people)
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Well, speeding causes more deaths in the UK every year than terrorism has in the last decade - roughly 6-12% (depending on the source) of fatal accidents are related to excessive speed, and at around 3000 per year, that gives between 180 and 360 deaths per year.
Even the lower limit is roughly 3 times the number of people killed in terror attacks in the UK in the last 10 years, including the 'Real IRA' Armargh bombing.
And don't get me started on those bastard litterbugs...
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Well, speeding causes more deaths in the UK every year than terrorism has in the last decade - roughly 6-12% (depending on the source) of fatal accidents are related to excessive speed, and at around 3000 per year, that gives between 180 and 360 deaths per year.
Everyone in modern society more or less has to accept a certain amount of inevitable risk, such as the well-known risks we all take getting into a car. We do what we can to limit the risks, balanced against reasonable practicality/economics. We have traffic rules that are enforced by law, rules against driving drunk, modern cars have an enormous amount of engineering in them devoted to safety, etc, etc... But even so, everyone understands that there's nothing you can do to prevent a certain number of acc
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Being mown down by a speeding drunk driver is also a senseless death.
The driver made a conscious effort to speed whilst drunk just as much as the terrorist made a conscious effort to detonate a bomb where people are very likely to get killed.
In fact, you could say deaths due to terrorism are less senseless, since they are ultimately designed to make the world a better place from the perspective of the terrorists and their supporters, whether or not we agree with it.
Drink driving and speeding can make no suc
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Speeding is worse. At least terrorists believe they are serving some higher cause. People who kill by speeding are just selfish assholes without even the justification of some warped morality. Add that to the fact that they kill far more people than terrorists ever could and I think i
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Then perhaps you should not charge people with "terrorism", but on murder, vandalism, etc.
I've never understood why "terrorism" needs special laws, when any kind of terror strike is already likely to run afoul of enough other laws to get you sent to prison for life. Even sending people flour in a letter could probably get you sued for harassment.
If anything, suing people for terror
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You see, that's the issue they tried to solve. Rather than have to get the needed proof and belief that "yes, they commited 1,842 crimes via one act" and try them each on so many x amounts of criminal charges, you can throw the book at them with one charge. No need to prove what constitutes things like single counts of vandalism and destruction of property when you've got so many other things to prove.
Makes your evidence, your trial and everything else easier. They've just done a shitty job deciding how to
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A blogger is detained under the ISA for writings that may be read to insult Islam. Members of the radical Islamic party then line to support an anti-ISA petition. And so on - how many Slashdotters understand the chain of events?
Really, every time an article like this comes up, all that happens is either comments that think that everywhere [slashdot.org]
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As a UK citizen for the last 44 years, I can tell you that we do not have anywhere near the level of political freedom that we had 10 years ago - 'terrorism' legislation has been routinely used against legitimate protests, and one clause in the legislation is currently being misused to justify 'stop and search' against youths, in an uncanny echo of the SUS laws that contributed so much towards the inner-city riots of the early 1980s.
British civil liberties are at such a low ebb that even establishment figur
Re:Blogger's blog (Score:4, Informative)
True, but that's because the opposition in Malaysia is still a rather nascent phenomenon. Yes, there have been opposition parties for years, but they are all very small, and so this odd alliance of non-Muslim Chinese Malaysians and the radical Islamic parties is what you get. It's the only way to face off the UMNO (ruling party) juggernaut.
Incidentally, the blame for the Internal Security Act (both in Malaysia and Singapore) can be laid squarely with the British. As someone else has pointed out, it was introduced when there was a very real fear that Malaya would fall to the commies; the British were successful in preventing that. But afterwards, these new "democracies" felt that the ISA might be useful, and so it has remained. The other British-imposed legislative gem is that criminalising sodomy (though Muslim Malaysia might have had something to say about that anyway): the one-time darling of the UMNO party and now leader of the opposition Anwar Ibrahim has twice been accused of sodomy, though pretty much everyone knows the charges were politically motivated. The first time round though, he spent quite a few years in jail for it.
The good thing is that sites like this "blog" are demonstrating that the power of the Internet is starting to act as a force for change (and why it is relevant to Slashdot, I might add). That the government feels the need to lock people up on trumped-up charges of anti-Islamic conduct is, ultimately, a sign that they are making waves. And that can only be a good thing.