"Monkey" Egyptian blogger Abdul Kareem sentenced

The (London) Guardian reports that 22-year-old Egyptian blogger Abdel-Karim Nabil Suleiman (aka Abdul Kareem), 22, a former law student at Cairo's Al-Azhar University, was sentenced to four years in prison for having insulted Islam and the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak.

As the Guardian reports:

Suleiman was one of several bloggers arrested last year, most of whom have connections to Egypt's pro-democracy reform movement. Others were freed but he was put on trial - a sign of the sensitivity of his writings on religion. He was first detained in 2005 after criticising Muslim rioters in a post about sectarian clashes in his neighbourhood headlined The Naked Truth of Islam as I Saw it.

He also described some of the companions of the prophet Muhammad as terrorists and likened Mr Mubarak to the pharaohs who ruled ancient Egypt.

There was no mention of Abdul Kareem's father in the Guardian' coverage of the sentencing hearing. Earlier we cited a news report that says his father called him a monkey, and to add insult to injury, so to speak, that he should be put to death in three days should he refuse to recant his criticisms of Islam

Dad, say it 'aint so

The FreeKareem website is reporting that the family of Abdul Kareem Nabeel Suleiman, the Egyptian blogger accused of "contempt of religion" and various crimes against the Egyptian state, has disowned him.

Abdul Kareem's father, a retired math teacher, reportedly said he thinks his son should be punished according to Sharia (Islamic law) - that is, if his son does not repent for having repudiated Islam within a period of three days, he should be put to death.

An Egyptian newspaper says that Abdul Kareem's father described his son as a "monkey" who "has imitated the athiests of the West in their intellectual thinking."