This was the cartoon published by Turkish cartoonist Bahadır Baruter in the weekly humor magazine “Penguen”:

The guy on the phone is talking to God, “asking to be pardoned from the last part of the prayer because he has errands to run.”

More importantly, the part circled in red is a somewhat-hidden message that says “There is no Allah, religion is a lie.”

For all that, Baruter is now on trial and faces prison time:

The Istanbul chief public prosecutor’s office charged cartoonist Bahadır Baruter with “insulting the religious values adopted by a part of the population” and requested his imprisonment for up to one year.

Right now, I’m not sure if there’s anything we can do other than raise awareness of this ridiculous overreaction.

But we can always repost this cartoon and give it more attention than the Turkish government ever anticipated…

(Thanks to Uğur for the link)



