MUSLIM PREACHER JAILED FOR BURNING BIBLE

A Muslim preacher has been sentenced to 11 years in jail for blasphemy on Sunday for burning a Bible during a protest last year outside the U.S. embassy. A court in Cairo handed down the rare sentence to Ahmed Mohamed Mahmoud. Convictions for insulting Islam are common in Egypt, ruled by Islamists after the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak in 2011, but more rare for cases involving the minority Christian faith. Ahmed Mohamed Mahmoud, known as Abu Islam, who runs his own religious television channel, led a demonstration in September against a U.S.-made anti-Islam video posted on the Internet, reports Reuters. His son was sentenced to eight years in jail for the same offence. Both will remain at liberty pending appeal. The video's depiction of the Prophet Mohammad as a fool and sexual deviant set off anti-American protests across the Muslim world. The film was later attributed to a Californian born in Egypt's Coptic Christian community, a group that has expressed concern about the rise of Islamist political power.