The world’s most populous Islamic country took another lurch backwards Tuesday when a court sentenced the capital city’s first Christian governor in half a century to two years’ imprisonment for “blasphemy.” The sentence handed down by the North Jakarta District Court was even stiffer than the one requested by Indonesian state prosecutors, who asked for a suspended sentence for outgoing Jakarta Gov. Basuki Tjahaja Purnama. “Jakarta,
Indonesia, had a rare and beautiful thing in their country – a Christian governor,” evangelical preacher Franklin Graham said in response to the trial. The governor, he commented, “was known for his honest and capable governance, but Islam wants domination, and they wanted him politically out of the picture.” Sentencing came four days after radical Islamists marched to the Supreme Court to demand a heavy sentence for Purnama. READ MORE
