Mohammed Taha, editor-in-chief of the Sudanese private daily Al-Wifaq, was found decapitated on a Khartoum street Wednesday. He had been kidnapped by masked gunmen. A few arrests have been made; the BBC reports “no-one has claimed responsibility but suspicion will immediately turn to Sudan’s hardline Islamic groups.”

What did Taha do that cost him his life? He insulted Islam, and dared to question Muslim history and other Muslims:

Taha’s decapitated body was found dumped on a dirt road on Wednesday. He had drawn protests from Islamic groups last year by reprinting a series of articles questioning the roots of the Prophet Mohammed…

… Taha himself was an Islamist, but his criticism of other Islamic groups angered people. In the 1990s, an attempt was made on his life after he wrote an article about Islamist leader Hassan al-Turabi which offended many.

Last year Taha was tried and his paper closed for three months for blasphemy, but sources said he was under close protection by the government during his time in prison.

Some of Khartoum’s Islamic groups protested angrily at his trial shouting threatening slogans.

Brave local journalists are speaking out, in defiance of the head-choppers:

Journalists in Sudan have condemned the killing of Mohammed Taha, a newspaper editor whose headless body was found outside Khartoum on Wednesday hours after he was kidnapped from his home in the city. The journalists’ association wrote to the government demanding action against whoever was responsible for the murder, but a demonstration by about 200 journalists in Khartoum on Wednesday to condemn the killing was broken up by the police, according to Alfred Taban, the editor of the Khartoum Monitor, an independent newspaper.

The jihadists mean what they say:

Robert Spencer writes: “Watch for the cascade of condemnations of this act from CAIR and MPAC and the like. But don’t hold your breath.”