Two ethnic Chinese bloggers who dissed Islam and Muslims got a jail term in one case and a heavy fine in another.

An excerpt from the AP story on CTV.ca:

Animal shelter worker Benjamin Koh Song Huat, 27, was jailed for one month while Nicholas Lim Yew, an unemployed 25-year-old, was sentenced to a nominal prison term of one day and fined the maximum 5,000 Singapore dollars ($2,969 US) for racist comments against the minority Malay community.

"Racial and religious hostility feeds on itself," said Senior District Judge Richard Magnus in passing sentence.

"Young Singaporeans ... must realize that callous and reckless remarks on racial or religious subjects have the potential to cause social disorder, in whatever medium or forum they are expressed," he said.

Lim and Koh stood in the docks with their heads bowed as they pleaded guilty to charges of committing acts "which had seditious tendencies to promote feelings of ill-will and hostility between different races and classes."

Lim had posted disparaging comments about Malays and Islam on an Internet forum for dog lovers in a discussion about whether taxis should refuse to carry uncaged pets out of consideration for Muslims, whose religion considers dogs unclean.

In his online journal, Koh had advocated desecrating Islam's holy site of Mecca.

In mitigation, Lim and Koh's lawyers said their clients were remorseful and had separately issued apologies. Their remarks have been removed.

About 80 percent of Singapore's 4.2 million people are ethnic Chinese. Malays — mostly Muslims — make up 15 percent while the rest are ethnic Indians, Eurasians and others.

The two men were charged under the Sedition Act, a law that dates back to the time of British colonial rule. The last time the law was used was 1965. The maximum sentence the two men faced was three years in prison.