Source: RNS
AMMAN, Jordan (Reuters) — A gunman shot dead Jordanian writer Nahed Hattar on Sunday outside the court where he was to stand trial on charges of contempt of religion after sharing on social media a caricature seen as insulting Islam, witnesses and state media said.
The gunman was arrested at the scene, state news agency Petra said. A security source said he was a 39-year-old Muslim preacher in a mosque in the capital.
Hattar, a Christian and an anti-Islamist activist, was arrested last month after sharing on social media a caricature depicting a bearded man in heaven smoking in bed with women and asking God to bring him wine and clear his dishes.
Lebanon’s powerful Shiite Hezbollah militant group mourned Hattar as a “brave and vocal voice” against the Takfiris, a derogatory term used to describe hard-line Sunni fundamentalists such as Islamic State.
Many of Jordan’s conservative Muslims considered Hattar’s move deeply offensive. Still, such politically motivated assassinations are rare in the U.S.-backed Arab kingdom, whose relative stability has distinguished it from war-ravaged neighbors such as Syria and Iraq.
Hattar, who was also Jordan’s most vocal supporter of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, was charged with contempt of religion and sowing sectarian tensions. The country’s highest official religious fatwa authority criticized Hattar for what it said was the “insult to the divine entity, Islam and religious symbols.”
“The assailant was arrested and investigations are ongoing,” Petra quoted a security source as saying, adding that the killer, who held a degree in civil engineering, had fired three shots at Hattar.
Categories: Blasphemy, Free Speech, Jordan, Middle East, The Muslim Times