Journalist Arrested By Interpol For Tweet

New submitter StarWreck writes "Police in Kuala Lumpur detained Hamza Kashgari, 23, 'following a request made to us by Interpol' on behalf of the Saudi authorities. Kashgari, a newspaper columnist, fled Saudi Arabia after posting a tweet which read: 'I have loved things about you and I have hated things about you and there is a lot I don't understand about you I will not pray for you.' Said tweet sparked outrage in Saudi Arabia and resulted in multiple death threats. Kashgari faces the death penalty in Saudi Arabia."

Comments

Re:and where is exactly the problem?

[Ethanol-fueled]

One of my favorite readings about religion is Dostoevsky's The Grand Inquisitor, which is featured in The Brothers Karamazov. Basically, Jesus returns to earth in the midst of the Spanish Inquisition. He goes around and does his Jesus thing, giving sight to the blind and healing the sick. The church gets word of this and arrests Jesus, putting him in a holding cell and sentencing him to death.

The Grand Inquisitor, knowing it's really Jesus, goes to Jesus' cell and asks him what the hell he's doing. Jesus wants to know why the church is treating him this way and the inquisitor says, "You're bad for business. Now that you're here, what the hell are we gonna do? Sorry man, it is in our best interests to make you disappear."

Jesus, somewhat homoerotically, kisses the inquisitor on the cheek and says, "I love you, brother." The Inquisitor, very moved by the gesture, opens the cell and releases Jesus, saying, "Get the hell out of here, and don't come back." Jesus walked off into the darkness and was never heard from again.

Re:and where is exactly the problem?

[shutdown -p now]

Whoa, that's a pretty broad brush you are painting with there. Let's not forget the millions of Muslim people who do not support terrorism and are as peaceful and law-abiding as most of the Christians in the world.

You know, I used to buy that line - that there are a few very vocal extremist Muslims that tarnish the real image of the religion of peace, but otherwise they're all really nice and mostly like us except for a few meaningless rituals. Then I ran into some interesting stats - from Wikipedia:

A survey carried out by the Indonesia Survey Institute found that 43% of Indonesians support Rajam or stoning for adulterers.

A survey conducted by the Pew Research Center found relatively widespread popular support for stoning as a punishment for adultery in Egypt (82% of respondents in favor of the punishment), Jordan (70% in favor), Indonesia (42% in favor), Pakistan (82% favor) and Nigeria (56% in favor).

Note that Indonesia is generally considered to be one of the most civilized Muslim majority countries - it's not officially an "Islamic state", and it clearly sets out freedom of religion in its constitution. Yet almost half of their population - exactly half if you only count Muslims - support death penalty, carried out in public, in a very nasty way that's deliberately designed to be prolonged and painful, and performed with active involvement of the community (to remind, rajm is generally meant to be carried out by the observers throwing stones). I'm not ashamed in the slightest of calling that half barbarians, because that's what they are in this day and age.

Turkey, now, is a different matter - practically an exception. But Turkey got where it's at by virtue of a single man who was leading it at the time embarking on what was, essentially, a very secularist and anti-religious campaign, forcing it upon the population - he was just careful enough to never openly say it was aimed against religion, but rather against "barbarous customs" and such.

(As an aside, this is also why democracy and human rights are, at present, concepts that are diametrically opposite in most Muslim majority states - so when you wish for democracy in Egypt or Libya or Syria, be sure that you understand well enough what it implies.)

But that is the core of Wahhabism.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

It is really confusing. One of the fundamental tenet of Wahhabism, was to reduce the amount of veneration of Mohammad. They claim even having the idea of a holy site associated with mortals is idolatry. Wahhab was worried Muslims of elevating Mohammad to the status of God. Sunni's fundamental complaint against Shias is that the Shias worship many saints in addition to Allah. Now the bastion of Wahhabism, Saudi Arabia, is turning against a journalist for treating Mohammad as a human being?