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.Nothing says "respect" like threatening to kill someone.
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.
Oh, and the reason that the Shi'ite MPs opposed the law?
Shiite MPs also demanded that the bill impose the death penalty on anyone who curses their sect’s 12 revered Imams, but the Sunni-dominated parliament rejected their request.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.