Notes on Church—State Affairs

Abstract

In January, 43-year-old Christian Hamid Soudad was arrested after a business associate filed a complaint that Soudad posted a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad on a social media platform three years ago. Soudad was sentenced to the maximum penalty of five years in prison for violating Article 144, which criminalizes insulting Muhammad or ridiculing “the basics of the religion or any of the Islamic rituals either in writing, drawing, expression or any other method.” Although similar cases have recently received reduced sentences, an appellate judge upheld Soudad’s original sentence. One similar case involved Slimane Bouhafs, who received a five-year sentence for a 2016 post that favored Christianity over Islam. When international advocacy groups became involved in this case, the sentence was shortened to two years. After his release in 2018, Bouhafs continued to receive threats, so he sought asylum in neighboring Tunisia, but trouble followed him. In late 2020, the...