A 23-year-old Moroccan-Italian female citizen has been sentenced to three and a half years in prison and fined $6,000 by a Moroccon court for “insulting Quran and Islam” on Facebook.
According to reports, the young woman was arrested earlier this month at the Moroccan capital Rabat for publishing a satirical version of the Quran on her Facebook account in 2019. She was arrested at the airport when she arrived from France nearly two years after she had posted an alleged blasphemous content.
The father of the lady said his daughter “did not know” she was the target of an arrest warrant for her Facebook posts. The man also defended his daughter by expressing that she “is not fluent in Arabic” and was unaware of the nature of the content she shared on social media.
The lady reportedly distorted Surat Al Kawthar, one of the short verses in the Holy Quran, changing its name to something that was allegedly provocative.
After visiting his daughter in prison, the woman’s father said her daughter is heartbroken after a Moroccon judge sentenced her for alleged blasphemy. He also stated that the court’s sentence “ruined” his daughter’s future.
“I visited her today, she is completely broken — they have ruined her future,” he lamented, saying that they intend to appeal.
Reportedly, the case was filed against this lady by an Islamic association in Marrakech, which formally submitted a complaint to Moroccan legal authorities before the girl’s return to Morocco.
According to the Moroccan Penal Code 267(5), anyone “who offends the Islamic religion or the monarchy, or incites territorial integrity” is liable to face stiff fines and prison time. Moroccan law enforcement has arrested several people over the past year for alleged insults to Islam.