Free Republic

On October 14 a Tunisian television station aired “Persepolis,” an animated movie about a girl coming of age during the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran. The film won the Jury Prize at the 2007 Cannes film festival, but its depiction of Allah as an old, bearded man upset Tunisia’s ultra-conservative Muslim radicals. After two days of mostly peaceful protests, one group estimated to be as large as 100 men rioted — torching the home of Nabil Karoui, the TV station’s top executive. Witnesses said the rioters arrived in taxicabs, armed with Molotov cocktails and knives. A similar group attempted to...

An Egyptian court sentenced a man to three years in jail with hard labour on Saturday for insulting Islam in postings on Facebook, the official MENA news agency reported. The Cairo court found that Ayman Yusef Mansur "intentionally insulted the dignity of the Islamic religion and attacked it with insults and ridicule on Facebook," ... The court said his insults were "aimed at the Noble Koran, the true Islamic religion, the Prophet of Islam and his family and Muslims, in a scurrilous manner,"... ... Egypt...is also home to the Middle East's largest Christian population, roughly 10 percent of its 80...