Indonesian TikToker jailed for blasphemy for telling Jesus to get a haircut

After being found guilty of disseminating hate speech against Christianity, an Indonesian social media influencer who recommended that Jesus get his hair cropped received a two-year and ten-month prison sentence.

According to local media sources and a statement from rights organization Amnesty International, a court in the province of North Sumatra condemned Ratu Thalisa, a Muslim transgender woman with around 450,000 followers on TikTok, for remarks she made about an image of Christ.

Thalisa, who goes by Ratu Entok online, posted the remarks in response to a viewer who suggested that she cut her hair to resemble a guy.

"You shouldn't look like a woman," Thalisa declared during a live broadcast on October 2, 2024, while holding up a photo of Jesus Christ. In order to resemble his father, you ought to get your hair cut.

Five Christian groups filed complaints to Indonesian police charging blasphemy, leading to Thalisa’s detention on October 8.

In addition to jail time, the court ordered Thalisa to pay a fine of roughly $6,200.

After the court determined that her remarks would have an impact on "public order" and "religious harmony," she was convicted under Indonesia's Electronic Information and Transactions (EIT) law.

Usman Hamid, Executive Director of Amnesty International Indonesia, stated on Monday that the "sentence is a shocking attack on Ratu Thalisa's freedom of expression" and that social media comments should not be punished under the EIT law.

In a statement, Hamid said, "Ratu Thalisa's speech act does not reach that threshold, even though Indonesia should forbid the promotion of religious hatred that amounts to incitement to discrimination, hostility, or violence."

According to Amnesty, from 2019 to 2024 at least 560 people were charged with alleged violations of the EIT Law under various offenses, including defamation and hate speech.

“This sentence highlights the increasingly arbitrary and repressive application of Indonesia’s EIT law to violate freedom of expression,” he added.

"The authorities must overturn Ratu Thalisa's conviction, guarantee her unconditional and prompt release, and remove or significantly amend the problematic sections of the EIT Law that criminalize "immorality," defamation, and hate speech," Hamid stated.

Thalisa is one of several individuals found guilty of blasphemy in recent years, the majority of whom were found guilty of insulting Islam.

With 231 million Muslims, or at least 93% of its adult population, Indonesia is the largest Muslim country in the world.

Rights organizations have cautioned that blasphemy laws are being "increasingly weaponized" in light of the country's recent growth in religious conservatism. 

Against anyone who are considered to have offended Islam and religious minorities.

Muslim social media influencer Lina Lutfiawati, also known as Lina Mukherjee on social media, was given a two-year prison sentence in September 2023 for sharing a video on TikTok that showed her doing an Islamic prayer before sampling pork.

The case of Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, an ethnic Chinese Indonesian politician popularly known as Ahok, who was Jakarta's first non-Muslim governor in fifty years, was one of the country's most well-known blasphemy cases.

After infuriating extreme Muslims during his 2016 reelection campaign by quoting a passage from the Quran, he was put on trial for blasphemy in 2017. He apologized publicly, but he was nonetheless imprisoned for two years.