The court did not allow the lawyers to obtain the case file and only allowed them to see it quickly, and the case documents did not include any specific publications published by the defendants that would qualify as promoting Shiite doctrine, while the accusation articles included article 98 (f) of the Penal Code known as “contempt of religions” that punishes "promoting extremist ideas that ridicule divinely-revealed religions."
Tags: the Penal Code
This ruling comes in a broader context of prosecutions and trials for online expression in general, and for religious expression in particular, and includes a wide range of persecuting of unconventional Islamic ideas such as criticism of some of the revered traditional figures of Sunni Islam, or the expression of ideas of non-Sunni Islamic sects such as Shiites, Ahmadiyya and the Quranites, in addition to expressing atheistic ideas or declaring unbelief and criticizing religions.
