As Pamela Geller notes, this AP story implies that the problem is being caused by “conservatives,” as if “conservatives” regularly call for the death of journalists who say things they don’t like. The fact that Islam has a death penalty for blasphemy, apostasy and hypocrisy, and that many Muslims take that penalty quite seriously, never appears in mainstream media coverage.
An update on this story. “Morocco Salafi clerics back death for journalist,” by Aziz El Yaakoubi for the Associated Press, July 6 (thanks to Pamela Geller):
RABAT, Morocco (AP) “” Three of Morocco’s most prominent conservative clerics have publicly backed a demand that a journalist be put to death for supporting greater sexual freedom in the North African kingdom.
Mokhtar el-Ghzioui, the editor of the daily al-Ahdath al-Maghribia, publicly supported a call by a Moroccan human rights activist to decriminalize sex outside of marriage. He said in a TV interview last week he would be fine with his mother or sister having consensual sexual relations outside of wedlock.
A preacher in the far eastern city of Oujda near the Algeria border then made a YouTube video on June 28 condemning el-Ghzioui as a “dyouth” a religious term for someone who willingly lets his wife commit adultery, and called for his death.
The preacher, Abdullah Nahari, was then summoned by the local prosecutor to answer to the charge of inciting a crime.
Abou Hafs, Omar el-Heddouchi and Hassan al-Kettani, the three most prominent clerics of the ultraconservative Salafi strand of Islam in Morocco, all spoke out in support of Nahari on their Facebook pages late Thursday.
“The arrogance of the secularists has become intolerable,” Kettani said. “A dyouth tells the world he would let his family sin and is then denounced by a sheikh and then it is the latter who is threatened with prison?”
The three men were imprisoned in 2003 and later implicated for inspiring a string of bombings by Islamist militants in Casablanca that killed 45 people. They were pardoned by the king in February….
Morocco, a favored destination for European tourists, is overwhelmingly Muslim and both drinking alcohol and sex outside marriage are prohibited by law. The laws are not strictly enforced, however.
Not right now they aren’t, but check again in a year.