Kuwait’s parliament on Thursday passed a bill stipulating the death
penalty for Muslims who curse or mock God, the Muslim holy book, all prophets
and the wives of Islam’s Prophet Mohammed.
The same punishment is applied
to those who “describe themselves as new prophets or messengers from God,” the
Kuwaiti state news agency KUNA reported.
“But if the accused is a
non-Muslim, the punishment would be lowered to jail for no more than 10 years,”
the report added, according to the bill.
Forty MPs, including cabinet
ministers, voted for the bill in the second and final round of voting, against
six opponents who included all five Shi’ite MPs present and liberal MP Mohammad
al-Sager.
The bill introduces two new articles to the Gulf state’s penal
code specifically to stiffen penalties for such offences.
Defendants who
repent in court will be spared capital punishment but will get a jail sentence
for five years and a fine of $36,000 or one of them, while repentance by those
who repeat the crime is not acceptable, the bill says.
“We do not want to
execute people with opinions or thought because Islam respects these
people... But we need this legislation because incidents of cursing God have
increased. We need to deter them,” opposition MP Ali al-Deqbasi said during the
debate.
Nothing says "respect" like threatening to kill
someone.
But once their amendment
was defeated, then they became advocates of freedom of expression:
Shiite MP Abdulhameed Dashti said the bill breaches the Kuwaiti
constitution and the principles of Islam.
“Why are we trying to show
Islam as a religion of death and blood when it is actually the opposite of
that,” Dashti said.
