Saudi Arabian Court Sentences Blogger To 7 Years, 600 Lashes Under Cybercrime Law
from the whipping-up-some-censoring dept
It is no secret that Saudi Arabia, still a chief American ally in the Middle East, has a horrible reputation on human rights, speech, and its policies regarding internet use. Most recently, they have attempted to put a stranglehold on internet communications via VoIP services. Don't forget as well that any citizen of Saudi Arabia that deigns to use Twitter has given up their claim on their immortal soul, which is sort of an odd stance to take given that members of the Saudi royal family have invested in the microblogging service. And, of course, as any conservative theocracy, they aren't particularly interested in having critical discussions about the state religion, despite having recently made statements suggesting otherwise.
Actions speak louder than words, as the saying goes, and as one Saudi court has dealt an activist blogger 7 years and 600 lashes, I think we can say Saudi Arabia still sucks at free speech. Raif Badawi had been imprisoned for the past few months for the apparent crime of starting a liberal blog seeking to start religious dialogue within Saudi Arabia.
He is accused of, among other things, breaking Sharia law and starting a website that infringed on religious values.It's a lesson in a great many things for us here in America. First, some of our allies have an awful lot of blood on their hands. Second, allowing any special interest groups, not just religion, to get their meat hooks into the censorship of speech is a dangerous precipice on which to teeter. Finally, free speech, secularism, and the enlightenment should be a global goal, not a local one. For instance, take the difficulty of getting Badawi any representation from the legal community into account.
According to Haidar, her husband just wanted to encourage discussion about religion in his homeland. But starting a liberal Internet forum in conservative Saudi Arabia can be a dangerous pursuit.
"No one wanted to take his case," said Waleed Abualkhair, Badawi's attorney. "Because they believed that anyone who'd take this kind of case, that means he destroys his (own) reputation. But I don't believe in that. I believe that everyone has his right to have a lawyer. And I believe that Raif is innocent."When the only person willing to represent you in a case about speech is himself on trial for his speech as well, you have a massive problem. Perhaps, like me, your first thought in reading this was to wonder what you could do to help. A noble thought, to be sure, but my first thought is what are the people we elect to represent us doing to help. They should be on this already, not relying on human rights groups.
Abualkhair is more than just Badawi's attorney. He's also his brother-in-law and a fellow human-rights activist also on trial in Saudi Arabia.
In the end, if Saudi Arabia wants us to believe their noise about becoming more open to change, it would be best if they started by freeing this peaceful blogger.
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Filed Under: blogger, free speech, saudi arabia
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oh yeah ... slavery is ok over there.
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Actual Sentence: Death
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Nope US definitely has the high ground here, so I'm sure they'll be real quick to condemn the treatment of this blogger as inhumane and a violation of justice.
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In theory yes. China's human rights abuses have nothing to do with their religion or lack of it.
As soon as the law starts incorporating religion, it starts to criminalize things based on what others don't like.
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A secular state that takes no position on religion would typically be best. The problem in America is that too many people care about the faith of their representatives....
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Islam, Sharia Law and life
There is no free speech, there is no dissent against Sharia Law. There is fully a desire to convert all people in all nations to Islam and convert all legal systems to Sharia Law. Everything they do (the Saudi rulers) is directed to this effort.
When they invest money in any venture, it is solely to gain control of that area for the advancement of their cause. You must always remember that the Saudi leadership are good Muslims and will always do what they can to further Islam.
One should never expect them to fall in line with the principles espoused by unbelievers and infidels. This is anathema to them.
Hence, there is nothing unusual about what has happened here, even though from the perspective of people living in western countries it is barbaric. The comment from That One Guy above appropriately sums up the dichotomy of it all.
To them, your opinion counts for absolutely nothing as you are an infidel and from the Muslim point of view, you would only have two choices, convert or die. As for me, I would have three choices, convert, die or pay ruinous financial penalties.
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And there is no worship of Ayn Rand as tho she were some sort of god.
And no one gives a shit about anything other than what you type into the comments section.
And everyone else is a dumbass except you
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Posts such as this carry a mandatory 30 lashes.
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Re: Collecting and destroying Ahadiths(sharia Laws) is Sunnah!!
Collecting & destroying (BONEFIRE) Ahadiths is SUNNAH!!
1) The Messenger (SAW)ordered his companions not to ask him to dictate anything else besides the Quran.---was narrated from Abu Sa'eed al-Khudri that the Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: "Do not write anything from me; whoever has written anything from me other than the Qur'an, let him erase it." (Narrated by Muslim, al-Zuhd wa'l-Raqaa'iq, 5326)
2) Whatever Hadith collection was present among the companions, it was ordered to be ignited.
3) Hazrat Abu Bakr(RA) made a bonfire of his own collection and banned others from quoting any hadith. (Tudween E Hadith Page 249)
4) Hazrat Omar(RA) after giving his best thought for one month, reached the conclusion to ban the compilation and collection of ahadith. Hazrat Omar also asked to submit all ahadith in possession of the public who were under oath and then ignited them all. He also sent a circular in all cities to destroy any evidence of hadith.
(Tadween e Hadith,Vol.1, page 400)
5) - Hazrat Ali gathered all the noble companions and said, "Disperse all of you and erase all Ahadith. Previous nations were destroyed for forsaking Allah's Revealed Books and following the collections of their scholars." (Mukhtasar Jaame' Bayan-il-'Ilm pg 33)
6) - "I have seen Ahadith in the Six Right Ones that completely cancel out the Qur'an."
(Nizaam-ul-Qur'an by Sheikh Hamiduddin Farahi)
IIf the above mentioned events are true then should we follow the above mentioned Sunnah to ignite all ahadith collections that we have today with us ?
FOR FURTHER GUIDANCE READ http://tolueislam.org/Parwez/mh/mh_01.htm
Also read : http://drshabbir.com/library/dualislam.pdf
& http://drshabbir.com/library/criminals.pdf
http://youtu.be/lJFwOqoTXvQ
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Islam, Sharia Law and life
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Re: Islam, Sharia Law and life
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America is no exemplar
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Be careful what you wish for. "Helping" to correct others who you don't agree with is a slippery slope the U.S. has been bobsledding down for quite awhile.
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Put it this way: if a crazed killer was shooting innocent people on the street and the police were doing nothing to stop it, you would not say that "lack of government intervention" was the right course of action, and you would quite rightly go further and say that the government not doing anything was a form of deliberate alliance with the killer. In other words, the government can possess some degree of fascism by doing nothing.
It is also worth noticing the parallels here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Samaritan_law , and how some countries make it a legal obligation to call for help if a dying person is spotted. They are beginning to recognise that bystanders have a great deal of responsibility in these situations whether they like it or not, and should be seen as dangerous if they are inhumane enough to let dying citizens fade away needlessly.
This also makes sense from a Leftist's point of view, where some redistribution of wealth is necessary to give bare necessities to those who need it most.
I hope I should not have to mention Rwanda, Darfur and Bosnia. And yes, I also happen to think Afghanistan under the Taliban, Iraq under Saddam Hussein and North Korea under the Kim-Il-Sung regime meet the conditions for intervention.
This doesn't have to be unilateral, by the way. There is clearly a change occurring in the Zeitgeist where totalitarianism, genocide and fascism are becoming the explicit enemies, and other democracies should feel free to join in at any time. It would sure cut the tax rates and set a global precedent.
And the U.S. should DEFINITELY take up this kind of responsibility, especially how it persists with its huge military industrial complex. Since they have burdened themselves with this weaponry, they have made themselves responsible, and they have made themselves obligated to stop genocides and take out regimes that have hit the bottom of the barrel of humanity.
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I emphatically disagree. A huge part of the reason that the US has become tyrannical, both domestically and internationally, is that the US decided that it should be the world's policeman.
It should not. That's too much power in a single entity, power that will (and has been) inevitably be abused. And taking on that mantel is destroying us.
That's not to say that atrocities should be ignored. But no single nation should be judge, jury and executioner.
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I see this as multilateral. "A" policeman implies there can only be one. But I do not believe that. The U.K. for instance was brave enough to defy all public opinion and do the right thing in March 2003 even if they did join in with the U.S. in committing stupid exaggerations and distortions about WMD. But there has never been a war, just or unjust, where politicians have NOT made war-time exaggerations such as this, so I really consider the WMD "lie" a frivolous issue.
But the fact that they joined in shows that the moral issue is not as unilateral as it seems or has to be.
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That's not even close to being correct. The world's policeman would have stepped into Rwanda, the Sudan, and a myriad of other places where we could have, and should have, helped but didn't. Remember that getting involved does not always mean militarily. To stand idly by while attrocities are committed is a horrible way to go about being a world citizen.
"That's not to say that atrocities should be ignored. But no single nation should be judge, jury and executioner."
It should if there is a threat to that nation's existence. To claim that radical Islam does not present a threat to the United States is laughable. To claim that this Saudi decision doesn't represent radical Islam is likewise laughable. Therefore, this is something in which we should be involved.
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And if I were an Iraqi-Kurd, or an Iraqi Shia or Sunni, would I have not been entitled to claim that something had to have been done about the fact that there was no international law Saddam Hussein did not break?
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USA
USA
USA
Fuck Yeah
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