AMMAN: Sad reports coming from Jordan confirm the untimely death of a Jordanian writer who was on trial for posting a cartoon mocking Islam on Facebook.
Nahed Hattar was killed by gunshot wounds he sustained just outside of the very same court where he was being tried.
His offence was simply posting a photo on facebook, a photo Muslims vehemently condemned as anti-Islamic.
According to State Agency Petra, the unfortunate Jordanian writer was shot three times before the attacker was disarmed and apprehended.
According to AFP, witnesses said an unknown gunman released gun fire at the frontage of the Abdali district court.
The killer gunman who was eventually arrested at the crime scene has been identified as Riyad Ismail Abdullah, a 49-year-old imam who just returned from making the Hajj pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia.
It is mind boggling that an imam who dedicated all his life to studying and understanding Islam could act so ignorantly as to murder a person who he imagined to make ridicule of Islam.
Does this act prove in anyway that Islam is peaceful? Or is such an action really a part of the Arabian religion?
Nahed, 56-years of age and a Christian from Abdali was apprehended by local law authorities on the 13th of August after he had uploaded a cartoon that made ridicule of jihadists on his facebook page.
After being accused of promoting sectarian tension and mocking Islam, he was released on bail early September. The attorney general of Jordan barred the media from covering the case.
Nahed took down the cartoon from his Facebook timeline after it had caused massive uproar and outrage from Muslims on social media.
The comical cartoon depicts Allah as the "God of Daesh", utilizing an acronym for the terrorist Islamic State group, it showed a bearded man in paradise smoking, lying in bed with nude women by his sides and ordering the Almighty God to bring him wine.
“I am mocking the terrorists and their conception of hell and heaven,” Mr Hattar wrote moments before his demise. “I’m not insulting the supreme Allah, at all, on the contrary, I’m against the type of God that the terrorists worship."
Nahed stated, “It mocks terrorists and their concept of God and heaven. It does not infringe God’s divinity in anyway.”
According to Nahed before he was murdered, the cartoon made ridicule and mockery of terrorists and the way and manner they perceive God and paradise and not an insult to the almighty Creator ultimately.
The family of late Mr Hattar wasted no time in blaming the Jordanian government whom they say failed to secure the life of the writer. They said further that the government's decision to publicly charge and accuse him made him an easy target for Islamic extremists in the volatile region.
“We hold the Ministry of Interior responsible,” said Jamal Attar, Nahed's cousin.
“This is the first assassination in Jordan that targets a person over nothing but his opinion, for freedom of speech. The prime minister was the first one who incited against Nahed when he ordered his arrest and put him on trial for sharing the cartoon,” according to Nahed’s cousin Saad Hattar.
Jordan happens to be a strong ally of the United States and plays a leading role in the US-led coalition seeking to obliterate the Islamic State group located in Syria and Iraq.
On the 21st of June, suicide bombers snuffed out the lives of seven border patrol guards. Jordan responded with air strikes targeting the Islamic terror groups and gave maximum support to the American led coalition troops stationed in the Middle Eastern kingdom.
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