You criticize Islam, you pay a dear price, ranging from jail to murder in many Muslim countries.
Canan Kaftancioglu, a Turkish politician and critic of Islam, has received a ten-year-long prison sentence for “blasphemy against Islam.”
Canan has risked her life and future by standing up for human rights and being daring enough to make fun of Islam:
“Canan once quipped on Twitter: “men with small dicks want to build big mosques.” She posted pictures of herself eating pork (forbidden in Islam) and acknowledged the historical reality of the Armenian Genocide. She once wrote, “stop praying, Muslims: there is no room left in paradise.”
Beyond Canan’s jokes about Islam is her activism for human rights, which are unrecognized by the Turkish government as it makes an example out of those who oppose President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his status as an Islamic despot. Canan is popular, which makes her more vulnerable as a threat to Erdogan. So in the classic Islamic supremacist style, accusations against her are full of lies, including the claim that she spread “terrorist propaganda, insulting civil servants, insulting the president and the Turkish state as well as having provoked public enmity.” The lies are reminiscent of charges of “Islamophobia” now commonly used in the West against those who criticize Islam and the human rights abuses committed in the name of its doctrine.
Canan’s plight should be of concern to anyone and everyone who advocates for human rights, but Westerners have generally become apathetic to the sufferings of those living in Muslim countries. The West has instead become increasingly subjugated, accepting the flawed claims that all cultures are equal, that Islam is a religion of peace, that acceptance of indiscriminate “diversity” is the new holy grail. All of these come at the expense of human rights and freedoms. The truth is that what is happening to Canan has entered Western nations: punishment for those who criticize Islam, all in the name of “tolerance.”
A petition to help Canan can be signed HERE.
“Turkish Dissident Faces Ten Years in Prison for ‘Blasphemy’ Against Islam,” by Kursat Christoff Pekgoz, FrontPage Magazine, October 7, 2019:
Canan Kaftancioglu, a Turkish politician and critic of Islam, has received a ten-year-long prison sentence for “blasphemy against Islam.” If the Court of Cassation upholds the verdict, Kaftancioglu will have to serve time in prison.
Canan is the executive director of the Istanbul branch of Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (CHP), the secular opposition. Islamists have suffered a crushing defeat in Istanbul, the largest city in Europe and the fourth largest city in the world, thanks to Canan’s relentless efforts. Canan has multiple college degrees and a long history of human rights advocacy, including working for TIHV (Turkish Human Rights Foundation). She has written her dissertation about “Torture Victims in Forensic Medicine.” Her father was assassinated by Islamists.
Islamists are furious because they lost Istanbul, and Canan has now become their scapegoat – given her courageous and colorful rhetoric. Canan once quipped on Twitter: “men with small dicks want to build big mosques.” She posted pictures of herself eating pork (forbidden in Islam) and acknowledged the historical reality of the Armenian Genocide. She once wrote, “stop praying, Muslims: there is no room left in paradise.” She expressed support for Kurdish dissidents, accused the current Turkish government of serial murder, and wrote that “being human is a higher dignity than being Turkish.” She is a Socratic provocateur, perhaps. But her irreverent statements serve a higher purpose: to protest human rights violations. She is the proverbial canary in the coal mine.
Turkey was once an imperfect but functional democracy. Now it is an increasingly theocratic state under the totalitarian presidency of Tayyip Erdogan. Erdogan’s presidential achievements include electoral fraud, persecution of religious minorities, war crimes in Africa, massacring Kurdish civilians, unparalleled corruption, banning Wikipedia and Twitter, centralized online censorship, stacking the courts, persecuting academics, and terrorizing journalists. Swedish lawmakers pressed charges of genocide against him. Various commentators have called him a tyrant, a terrorist, and a war criminal. He has been condemned by international organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
Erdogan’s world view is hateful, racist, imperialistic and totalitarian. He believes that Muslims can conquer Europe via demographic jihad. He denies that men and women are equal. He wrote an anti-Semitic play in high school, with a plot borrowed from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. He once endorsed a German faction of al-Qaeda. He is also a catastrophic failure in economic matters. He had the constitution rewritten to invest himself with unlimited executive powers. And yet he is shameless enough to market himself as a human rights advocate to The Washington Post…..