Source: Time

By Yenni Kwok

Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, the governor of Indonesia’s capital Jakarta, is set to face blasphemy charges in court, the Indonesian Attorney General’s Office (AGO) told journalists Wednesday.

The police submitted a dossier to the AGO last Friday, nine days after they named the Christian governor, popularly known by his Chinese nickname Ahok, as a suspect in the case.

Ahok, who is running in the gubernatorial election next year, said the legal process would take some time. “The proceedings until the ruling could take one to two years,” he said. “There’s nothing that shows I insulted a religion. Nothing at all.”

The governor, who has a reputation for speaking bluntly, is accused of insulting Islam in a campaign speech he made on Sept. 27, in which he pushed back against hard-line and ultraconservative Muslims who have argued that a non-Muslim should not hold a leadership position in Indonesia — the world’s most populous Muslim nation.

At the time, he said that hardliners who had backed up their position by citing a Quranic verse were lying. He told a crowd: “Ladies and gentlemen, you don’t have to vote for me — because you’ve been lied to by those using [the Quran’s] Surah al-Maidah verse 51.”

Many religious moderates have defended Ahok, and his supporters say the transcript of his speech has been edited to change its meaning. An academic who uploaded the video and transcript online has also been charged with hate speech.

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