Bullshit, Damn, What, Unbelievable.. these where some of the first things came to people’s mind commenting on my Facebook status that Eslam Samhan, a Jordanian poet and a journalist, was sentenced with one year in prison and 10,000 JOD (almost same in EUR) fine. He was convicted the day before yesterday with what described as “insulting religions” for using phrases of the Quran in his poetry book “As light as the shadow” (برشاقة الظل). The news as it came from the AP:
The court said Sunday that Islam Samhan published his work without approval from the Jordanian government. Jordanian law bans publication of books that could be seen as harmful to Islam and the Prophet Muhammad.
This is not the first case of human rights violation of this sort that happened in Amman in the past year, last Ramadan, many tourism and leisure outlets were closed on various accusations, and couple of months ago, a friend of mine and a school principal, Ahmad Al Jaafrah, was fired from a public school for objecting of using religious themes in the schools morning exercises!
I worked with Eslam before on Voices for Gaza fund raising concert, and he’s a very well mannered good man, and you know what, forget it, even if he’s an asshole and a lousy poet, he have the right of free speech, this is a secular state, and everybody should understand that, this is not Saudi Arabia neither Taliban’s Afghanistan, if this is not understood by some, then we should make it so.
It’s plain and simple, this is YOUR RIGHT you’re defending on, this is not just about Eslam, or Ahmad, or Madian, or or or.. this is about YOUR RIGHT, the right that you have as a human being, even before Jordan signed the UN human rights declaration, it is you nature-given right, your right to be free, that no one should take it away from you.
Action
- If you’re in Jordan
Join us tomorrow to organize a campaign against this sentence before the appeal
Where: Daret Al Fonon – Lwebdeh
When: Wednesday, 6:30 PM
- Outside Jordan
If you know media or organization welling to help on this issue, let me know at:
gyonis [at] gmail [dot] com
June 23rd, 2009 at 3:47 pm
You forget before anything is published it is supposedly reviewed by a board consisting of Mukhabarrat under the guise of the publications and press committee. This includes magazines and books too.
June 23rd, 2009 at 4:50 pm
This will be a controversal issue you know. Some would support you and some won’t, I’d rather read his poetry before making up my mind. True Jordan is a secular state but from the outside only
June 23rd, 2009 at 6:07 pm
Have you seen the charges Steffen, insulting religions and slandering religious feelings! That sound like a medieval witch hunt to me! Besides, many people choose to go this way due to the rigid restriction of the government, couple of weeks ago I went to a movie screening, half of the movies there wouldn’t have seen the light if it had to go through the system.
And 1 year jail.. common! This guy has a family to feed, this is not a slap on the wrist here we’re talking about.
Ali, here’s a link with phrases from his poem in Arabic:
http://ammannet.net/look/article.tpl?IdLanguage=18&IdPublication=3&NrArticle=30646&NrIssue=5&NrSection=1
June 24th, 2009 at 2:31 am
Pretty good post. I just came by your site and wanted to say
that I have really liked browsing your blog posts. Anyway
I’ll be subscribing to your feed and I hope you post again soon!