A Cairo misdemeanours court upheld Wednesday a one-year prison sentence for a citizen on charges of contempt of Islam, after he had publicly called for an “Islamic revolution” via Facebook.
In his call for a protest in March, defendant Al-Sayed Al-Naggar also promoted the burning of Sahih Al-Bukhary’s books on Islamic teaching.
In May, the defendant was sentenced to one year in prison and EGP 1,000 bail to suspend the verdict, the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression (AFTE) reported. However, the defence lawyer in the case could not be reached in order to clarify whether the new decision maintained the possibility of a suspension of the verdict.
AFTE’s lawyer Fatma Serag previously told Daily News Egypt that Al-Naggar staged a one-man protest in front of Al-Azhar and burned the book of Al-Bukhary’s teachings.
“He called for the protest via Facebook, stating that Sahih Al-Bukhary’s Islamic teachings promote extremism and supported the ideologies of the Islamic State,” Serag had explained.
Serag had considered the charge unjust and said that the book was not even a holy one. Human rights defenders have demanded the abolition of Article 98 of the Penal Code on contempt of religion for its use as a tool to oppress writers and intellectuals.
