But yesterday, an article in my local newspaper caught my eye and here's an English article saying basically the same:
An Iranian rapper is facing death threats and has a $100,000 bounty on his head for a song that some say insults an Islamic Shiite imam.
Shahin Najafi, who sings in Farsi and lives in Germany, told the German website Qantara that the song "Naghi" is not about a religious figure but about the state of society in Iran.
"The story with 'Naghi' was just a pretext," Najafi said in an interview with Qantara, which the German Foreign Office funds to promote dialogue with the Islamic world.
"For me it is more of an excuse to talk about completely different things. I criticize Iranian society in the song. It seems as though people are just concentrating on the word 'imam,' " Najafi is quoted as saying.
Religious figures in Iran see it differently.
"Following the affront by rap singer Shahin Najafi against Imam Hadi (7th Imam of Shias) in a song called 'Naghi', his apostasy sentence has been issued by Ayatollah Safi Golpayegani," Iran's official Fars News Agency said in a website posting in Farsi.
Golpayegani is a grand ayatollah, which means the highest- ranking authority in Shiite Islam after prophets and imams. Being an apostate, or someone who forsakes Islam, is punishable by death under Iranian law.
"If the song contains any insults or indecency towards Imam Naghi, then it is blasphemy, and God knows what to do," Golpayegani, a 92-year-old Iranian cleric, is quoted as saying by Qantara.
A post on the blog entegham says Najafi should be sentenced to death.
Here's the full article: http://edition.cnn.com/2012/05/16/world ... index.html
When I read stuff like this, it just makes all those censorship/freedom of speech discussions that we see sometimes (this is an Eminem Forum, I don't need to go into detail) seem so irrelevant.
I am very critical when it comes to censorship and generally think that it does more harm than good, but this is just... It blows my mind. To restrict freedom of speech to the point that you face death if you contradict your government's opinion... I can't wrap my mind around that.
Your thoughts?
