No one in this case seems to be in the least concerned with whether or not what this fellow said was true. Imagine the embarrassment of French authorities when they discover that he was simply enunciating a mainstream Sharia position.
A hadith depicts Muhammad specifying the punishment for homosexual activity: “The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said, ‘Whoever you find doing the action of the people of Loot, execute the one who does it and the one to whom it is done.’” (Sunan Abu Dawud 4462)
“AT THE PALACE Tweets and insults against homosexual people,” translated from “AU PALAIS Des tweets et des injures à l’encontre des personnes homosexuelles,” by Boris de la Cruz, Objectif Gard, March 16, 2023 (thanks to Medforth):
A man was in court for posting insults and threats against homosexuals on Twitter.
A father appeared this Thursday afternoon before the Nîmes criminal court for “public provocation to hatred or violence because of sexual orientation or gender identity by word, writing, image, or means of communication to the public by electronic means.”
Concretely, this 30-year-old convert to the Muslim religion and practicing Muslim, according to his statements at the hearing, is accused of having disseminated offensive comments because of sexual orientation. It was the Gard prefecture that reported the facts to the prosecutor through the security and surveillance services.
The defendant indicates in particular in discussions on social networks: “Islamist jurisprudence agrees on the fact that homosexuality must be punished by the death penalty!” And he sets out the methods to be used: “stoning, throwing from a high point, or death by fire,” reads at the hearing the president of the correctional court of Nîmes, Jérôme Reynes, who summarizes the procedure.
A Twitter account immediately in the sights of state services. This Thursday, before the Gard repressive court, the respondent evokes: “a bad joke, I wanted to respond to comments on social networks with irony,” says this Gard real estate agent, who lives in a town on the outskirts of Nîmes, in his own defense.
“In this kind of case, we always evoke the irony afterwards, and in particular when we are in court…. But for me it is a defense which serves to reduce its responsibility because at the time of the tweet the intention was different,” says the deputy prosecutor Arnaud Massip, who calls for a 5-month suspended prison sentence and a sentence of ineligibility of one year.
“It is an insidious, free means of communication, and on the internet, people type away on the keyboard in the evening and feel safe from anything that could be punishable,” pleads lawyer Jean-Philippe Galtier for the accused. “This is the open door for anything and everything and, within this framework, also for completely inappropriate statements. But here you have to look for criminal culpability and there is no call for hatred on his part towards a community in this case. He is merely passing on statements he has read or found on the internet,” said lawyer Galtier, who called for an acquittal and pointed to the jurisprudence of the Court of Cassation, which was in favour of his client. The court decided to adjourn its decision in a fortnight.
