A photo of the cartoon as it appeared in the Jakarta Post on July 3, (with the potentially criminally blasphemous part of it blurred out, of course)
On July 3, the Jakarta Post newspaper published a cartoon criticizing the Islamic State (ISIS) and its use of violence in the name of religion. Although Arabic language media outlet such as Al Quds Arabi had published the cartoon without incident, some in Indonesia found the drawing, and in particular its use of an Arabic phrase considered sacred in Islam, offensive.
The Jakarta Post apologized for and retracted the cartoon soon after. But that wasn’t good enough for the Jakarta Muballigh Corps (KMJ), a Muslim organization that filed blasphemy charges against the newpaper’ss chief editor, Meidyatama Suryodiningrat. Yesterday evening, police formally named Meidyatama a suspect in the case.
The newspaper responded with a statement from Meidyatama, who said: “We are amazed because the fact is we did not commit a criminal act as accused. What we produced was a journalistic piece that criticized the ISIS [Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant] movement, which has carried out violence in the name of religion. It means that the ISIS caricature was not blasphemous. We all know that ISIS is an organization that is banned in Indonesia and across almost the entire world.”
Indeed, Indonesia has taken a hard stand against ISIS, doing its best to eradicate the creeping influence of the terrorist group on the country. However, reports say that there has been an alarming rise in ISIS support in Indonesia recently.
We wonder if that might be because some people in Indonesia see any criticism as ISIS as blasphemous attacks on Islam in general…
At any rate, the Indonesian Press Council, as noted in Meidyatama’s statement has said the matter should be handled by them, as it concerns journalistic ethics and not criminal behavior. The Jakarta-based Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI), also denounced the charges, calling them a “serious threat” to press freedom.
“We urge the police not to use the Criminal Code to deal with journalistic cases, but the Press Law to solve disputes related to news reports and press products,” the organization said in a press release.
Last thing we’ll note – several other Indonesian media sites, such as Merdeka, published photos of the cartoon in question on their sites (unedited, unlike us) when reporting on this story. We wonder when the blasphemy charges against them will be filed?
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