Blasphemy law in Jordan

In October 2008, the prosecutor general of a magistrate's court in Amman charged Islam Samhan with insulting Islam and the Quran as well as violating the Press and Publications Law for incorporating verses of the Quran into a book of love poetry.^[4] On or about 25 June 2009, the magistrate's court ruled that twenty-seven-year-old Samhan should spend one year in prison and pay a fine of 10,000 dinars.^[5]

On 1 July 2008, a Jordanian prosecutor charged eleven Danes and one Dutchman, with blasphemy and contempt of Muslims. One of the charged Danes was the cartoonist who, in 2005, drew a caricature of Mohammed and other cartoons for the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. The other Danes were the editors of newspapers that published the cartoons. The charged Dutchman was politician Geert Wilders, who made an anti-Quran film (Fitna). Wilders and the others did not comply with the prosecutor's order that they stand trial in Jordan.^[1][6]

In May 2006, two journalists involved in reprinting three of the 12 Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons were issued a two-month prison sentence.^[7] Jordan was the only Muslim country to reprint the Danish cartoons depicting Muhammed in one of its newspapers. The two Jordanian editors responsible were sacked and pressured to issue a public apology.

In January 2003, authorities in Jordan arrested three Jordanian journalists: Nasser Qamash, Roman Haddad and Muhannad Mbaidin for blaspheming Mohammed in Al Hilal, a weekly newspaper. Their article speculated on Mohammed's sexual potency after marrying Aisha, the favorite of his fourteen wives. A military tribunal sentenced the journalists to prison terms ranging from two to six months, and closed Al Hilal for two months. ^[8]

• Apostasy in Islam
• Human rights in Jordan
• Religion in Jordan