Weird news - Man sentenced to 500 lashes for blasphemy

When you pick up novels about medieval times, you see so many cases where people were sentenced to many sorts of different sentences for crimes against God, such as the extreme one of being burned at the stake for blasphemy. A number of people were convicted and killed in such a manner, which even encompassed acts such as proposing that the universe did not center around the earth, rather that the earth moved around the sun. But these were all stories of what used to happen many centuries earlier.
So, it seems very surprising that such cases happen even now, primarily in Islamic countries where uttering anything that could be construed to be against god can actually be punished by death. And this is not a hypothetical case, there have been numerous cases where people have been convicted of blasphemy on flimsy evidence, or in the more horrid cases, mobs have believed about these utterances of blasphemy and lynched people. Consider this case, where a person on the Haj was convicted of uttering something against the relatives of the Prophet Mohammed and sentenced to a prison term as well as 500 lashes (which could actually kill him) (link to article)

Mansor Almaribe, 45, was found guilty of blasphemy after he was arrested last month in Medina while on a pilgrimage, Australian officials said.
It's unclear what Almaribe, a Shia Muslim from Victoria state, said or did to get arrested.
"The ambassador has urgently contacted Saudi authorities and will make strong representations, including to key figures in the Saudi government, seeking leniency," said Kate Sieper, a foreign affairs spokeswoman.

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Weird news - Iranian actress sentenced to an year in jail and lashes

It is always bad to be generic, but it has typically been found that Islamic societies tend to be more conservative than western countries, frowning upon expressions that are fine with other countries. For example, Saudi Arabia tends to be very conservative on the rights of women, not even allowing them to drive, or to move around with men who are not related to them. Iran is also conservative, but it gets more difficult since Iran lives in the condition of paranoia, especially when it comes to something that is like the expression of freedom or against the power of the theocratic state. Consider how this actress was sentenced to a relatively harsh punishment for her portrayal of scenes from inside homes in Iran, and was objected to by the censors inside Iran (link to article):

Actress Marzieh Vafamehr has been sentenced to a year in jail and 90 lashes by an Iranian court for her role in an Australian film on the limits imposed on artists in the Islamic republic.
The film My Tehran for Sale which won the 2009 Independent Spirit Inside Film award and the jury award for best feature film at the Trimedia Film Festival in 2010 has been directed by Iranian-Australian Granaz Moussavi.
It was a production of Adelaide-based Cyan Films and the movie tells the story of a young actress in Tehran whose theatre work is banned by the authorities.