Comedian found guilty of insulting Islam

[Hilander]

CBS News...(AP) CAIRO - An Egyptian court has sentenced one of the Arab world's most famous comedic actors to jail for offending Islam in some of his most popular films. Adel Imam was sentenced to three months in jail and fined $170 for insulting Islam in roles he played. Read More Here

Can you imagine what it would be like here if we sent comedians to jail for insulting Christianity or any religion for that matter. The jails would be full. This article makes me realize we could be a lot worse off than what we are here and other countries as far as freedom of speech goes. Do you think Islam will ever get to the point they can take any criticism of their religion? What do you think?

 

[Crouton]

This is pretty crazy, over here comedians insult everyone and everything haha, they are comedians, you shouldn't take it personally. I couldn't even imagine a comedian getting arrested for having a go at a particular person, religion, political figure etc. That happens all the time.

 

[ChaosHerald]

I thought that the point of comedy was to find a topic and say something funny about it. Anyway, I also thought there is a thing called 'free speech'. Apparently I misunderstood that too. If we would start searching and locking up all comedians who said something insulting, then we can just criminalise comedy, because most of the topics will be offensive to someone. That's just plain ridiculous.

 

[Iris]

Chaos, I don't know if you're confused but that didn't happen in America. Unless Egypt has freedom of speech and I didn't know about it. haha

That's pretty messed up, but I'm glad the sentence wasn't that bad. Three months? 170 bucks? I thought for sure while reading the article it would have been one to two years.

Still, he shouldn't receive a sentencing in the first place. That's just their culture, I guess.

 

[ChaosHerald]

Chaos, I don't know if you're confused but that didn't happen in America. Unless Egypt has freedom of speech and I didn't know about it. haha

That's pretty messed up, but I'm glad the sentence wasn't that bad. Three months? 170 bucks? I thought for sure while reading the article it would have been one to two years.

Still, he shouldn't receive a sentencing in the first place. That's just their culture, I guess.

Oops, sorry got carried away there by my outrage . Thanks for correcting me. Yeah, the situation makes more sense, but still, they are calling themselves a democratic country now and in a democratic country there is the right to free speech. I can see that he chose a very touchy topic... however, I still don't think he should be in prison.

 

[Wade8813]

It's unfortunate, but at least the punishment wasn't too crazy. In many Muslim countries, I'm pretty sure it would have been a LOT worse.

Democratic countries don't necessarily have free speech. Democracy just means people can vote to make what rules they want (more or less). In fact, while many countries do have free speech to some extent, I think the US may be the only one that really embraces it.