Libyan National Party officials Fathi Sager and Ali Tekbali were charged with "insulting Islam" for posters about women's roles. A character on the poster was declared blasphemous for resembling Charlie Hebdo's Muhammad cartoons.
After the 2012 Libyan election, two officials of the Libyan National Party were arrested and detained under charges of insulting Islam. Policy manager Ali Tekbali and secretary general Fathi Sager faced such accusations over posters their party distributed during the election campaign.
“I do not understand why I am even in this situation. I disagreed with the publishing of these posters in the first place, not because of their content, but I did not think we had sufficient budget for the campaign, the drawings lacked quality, and I felt someone could be offended as the man depicted is ugly. But this is absurd. These penal code articles are meant to put a muzzle on political dissent.” - Fathi Sager
The posters had featured drawings of several characters, attempting visually to comment on social issues including the role of women in society. One of these characters, however—at least according to prosecutors—looked remarkably similar to the drawings of the Prophet Muhammad published by French magazine Charlie Hebdo, which were themselves at the center of great controversy and harm. This mere resemblance to renderings of the Prophet someone else had published was enough to take Ali and Fathi to trial.
The two men could have faced as much as the death penalty under their charges. Fortunately, they were acquitted in March 2014.
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Following a decade of civil conflict, Libya today has a provisional government and is in the process of establishing a permanent one. The constitutional declaration of the interim government, currently the supreme law of the land, stipulates that Islam will be Libya's state religion. Under the most recent penal code, blasphemy against Islam specifically is punishable with imprisonment.
Apostates, on the other hand, can lose their marriages and inheritance rights by the structure of Libyan personal status law, which, in the realm of family matters, subjects Muslims to religious law. In addition, some courts continue to issue death sentences for apostasy despite its status as a capital offense being unclear due to the political upheaval of the recent decade.