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Journalist Arrested For Tweet Deported to Saudi Arabia
New submitter cosmicaug writes with an update to yesterday's report that journalist Hamza Kashgari had been arrested by Malaysian police acting on a request conveyed from the Saudi government via Interpol. Now, says the BBC, "Police confirmed to the BBC that Hamza Kashgari was sent back to Saudi Arabia on Sunday despite protests from human rights groups. Mr Kashgari's controversial tweet last week sparked more than 30,000 responses and several death threats. Insulting the prophet is considered blasphemous in Islam and is punishable by death in Saudi Arabia. Mr Kashgari, 23, fled Saudi Arabia last week and was detained upon his arrival in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur on Thursday." Writes cosmicaug: "Sadly, the most likely outcome is that they are going to execute this man for three tweets."
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As far as I know, most western countries have a policy that states "If a man will be executed upon being sent to a country, you are not allowed to send this man to the country, nor are you allowed to deport him to a country that may deport him to the country in question", or something similar. Disregard the lack of Lawyer shargon, but instead: Why was this rule not followed?
Separation of State and Church = good.
"Sadly, the most likely outcome is that they are going to execute this man for three tweets."
Why does Interpol even acknowledge this?!
What is even worse is that Interpol acknowledges blasphemy as a crime.
This may give the world the impression that religions have substance and may be respected.
... of his citizenship send him to a country where apostasy isn't a crime?
Or would the number of tweets fom like minded citizens hoping to duplicate his fortune crash twitter's servers?
The US used to have the moral high ground to protest these sort of things. What a difference a decade makes.
How much clearer does it need to be made to us, that our oil addiction is putting us in bed with some really, really objectionable regimes around the world?
Don't get me wrong, I'm no hippie on a bicycle, and I don't hate Muslims or their faith (at least, no more than I dislike Christians or Christianity) but when you've got nations involved in the whole "execution for apostasy" game, cut them off. Yes, geopolitics is hard, but we should never have let ourselves get put in a position where we'd support any regime like this.
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
"Wont be long till it happens here in the USA. Just a matter of time."
MPAA:
You have illegally downloaded Harry Potter Movies.
You shall hereby be sentenced to death by hanging with a CAT-5 ethernet cable.
By order of:
The United Corporations Of America
Unless you have a way to show that one moral system is better than another, you can't say one country's laws and preferences are better than another.
Luckily, it's actually very easy to compare laws and judicial systems, and find one - as informed by specific philosphical/moral tenets, and codified in a constitution - to be, in fact, plainly superior. That is, if rationality plays any role in the mechanisms by which you evaluate such things. I don't fee any urge to use crazy magical thinking as a standard by which to compare systems, so I have none of the trouble that some people - strangely, toxically - have with the need for moral relativism in order to remain politically correct and not hurt anyone's feelings.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Just tell me where to buy the Mr. Fusion upgrade.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
With Islam, there is no such thing as moderate Islam.
Turn the clock back 600 years or so (the difference in age between Christianity an Islam) and look at the behavior of the Catholic Church.
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition ....
Have gnu, will travel.
However, do not try to link one's opinion to an ideal the same to one that is a physical act. Further more, I fail to see how you would try to say the two are even more similar.
OK, I'll try to explain it.
Spreading child porn and blaspheming against god are both speech. That is it, there isn't any serious argument on this point.
In America, we oppose spreading child porn, in part because sometimes it hurts kids, but also because we tend to view sex-offenders as scum, and label them as scum for the rest of their lives. We prevent them from living close to schools, we create websites to easily look up where they live. It doesn't matter if no kids were harmed in the making of the porn, we still label them as such. Note, I am not a supporter of child porn, just trying to show how morally, these two things are similar.
In Saudi Arabia, blaspheming against god can ruin the lives of others, if you manage to convince them to be bad, etc. It also labels you as scum, undesirable, someone to be avoided. Their punishments for the particular crime are harsher, but in many ways it is similar to our child porn laws.
Now, I am personally opposed to condemning people for blasphemy, and I think anything that hurts little kids is horrible, but this is based on my own personal beliefs. I can understand the beliefs that the Saudis have that would make them come to different conclusions.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Everyone's morals are based on something. I don't know what yours are based on, but clearly they don't include "not hurting anyone's feelings," (although somehow they do include "not disappointing your bird dog").
Other people have morals based on other things, including not hurting people's feelings. How can you judge yours to be better, except to claim that your beliefs are better?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Man there's a heck of a lot of trolls commenting here.
Look, this is a problem of dictatorship, not of religion. The majority of the world's Muslims live in democracies and don't have such repressive laws. Muslims in America are aghast at such an unjust situation. Saudi is the backwards exception in the Muslim world. I'm a Muslim and I certainly don't support what's going on here.
How can you judge yours to be better,
Really? You can't summon the perspective to see that a moral system that stones women to death for teaching their daughters to read is fundamentally, objectively inferior to a system that doesn't do so?
Who cares if moral systems are based on different things? When they're based on death worship, for example, they are inherently, irrationally self destructive. When a moral code is based on lies (say, about the nature of the world around you) it is a code that embraces untruth as its foundation. Do you really find no means, in your own reckoning, to separate such a value system from one that seeks and acknowledges reality?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Just tell me where to buy the Mr. Fusion upgrade.
What is trying to be done is to develop alternative or "green" energy. Unfortunately with the rancorous political dialog here in the US, it's being dragged down.
I firmly believe that the only way for us in the US to fully develop other energy sources is for government involvement. I agree, it's not the best solution but US business is too short sighted to pursue that avenue on its own - and part of their short shortsightedness is from Wall Street pressure - got to have immediate returns, after all.
In the meantime, all of the cutting edge alternative energy developments are being done in Europe and in China.
I find that quite damning of our political and business environment.
So, those Saudi assholes are going to keep doing their shit for a very long time - no thanks to us, the US.
Unless you have a way to show that one moral system is better than another, you can't say one country's laws and preferences are better than another.
Since SA regularly executes people for "sorcery", I'm pretty sure I could identify a superior legal system or two.
So you equate blashpemy with child porn? Seriously?
Ding, ding, ding. We have yet another person who doesn't understand that analogies are not eqalities.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Sure, why not? Go after the people who actually hurt the children, rather than wasting time arresting people who look at pictures/videos.
Can't do that? Too bad.
But why should we?
This isn't a person's development we're talking about, where we can dismiss it by going "oh, poor Islam, his brain just isn't fully developed yet. Give him some time."
This is an organization who has had a dozen lifetimes just in your 600 year timeframe to watch and to see how things work without being insecure, murderous pricks, and that's not to mention the however many more lifetimes they have had to "mature" to begin with. At this point there is little to say but that they are actively rejecting the concept.
This is not a defense of Christianity, nor is it some ridiculous finger pointing as to who started it; I think all religions are a pox upon the world. But the idea that Islam somehow should get an extra 600 years to find itself before being criticized as extremist or intolerant is ludicrous. It's not the middle ages anymore.
There's a tendency to think that the US is above all this -- that Bertrand Russell's famous saying ("Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines.") refers not to the future, but to the past, and that we have all somehow become enlightened, that we've matured out of these primitive superstitions along with the violence, hatred, prejudice, bigotry, slavery, and ignorance that they support.
But we haven't. Let me suggest the following thought experiment to you: write on a large piece of posterboard "I skullfucked Mary and shit on Jesus' face." Now go stand with that poster on a streetcorner in Topeka, Kansas at 9 AM on Monday morning. Do you think you'll survive the day?
Of course these are purely mythical creatures, no more real than Arthur Dent or Allah or Harry Potter or Zeus or Loki or any other fiction. But, amazing, there are people on this planet -- including in Topeka, Kansas, in the heart of the United States -- who will attack and kill you for that sign.
Some will point out that at least this isn't codified into law: that is, that such attacks are extralegal. My response to that is (a) not yet, they aren't, although if you're paying any attention to contemporary American politics you know full well that there are numerous attempts underway to make Christianity the state religion and (b) it's not clear to me why, when you're lying in the street bleeding and dying, the lack of statutory authority will matter to you.
When we in the United States have progressed beyond this -- when we no longer live in a society where atheists are considered as trustworthy as rapists -- then perhaps we can claim some measure of the moral high ground here.
What are you babbling about? As a Muslim, I know that Muhammad, peace be upon him, died 1400 years ago, while God never dies. You still say Islam puts him above God; the Being who created all of the galaxy and existence?
Look, if Muhammad were alive today, he would not stand for such an injustice being done in his name. He was known to have people spit in his face and physically assault him, and he forgave them and spared them from punishment. What the Saudi dictatorship is doing is quite the opposite of Islam and islamic history.
Both are pretty much witch hunts. One is literally a witch hunt. Perhaps your own cultural bias prevents you from seeing the same undercurrents in them. Those wacky Muslims and their blasphemy; but lock those people with kiddy porn up forever! Yeah, totally different things... right.
Great Intellect...
We buy our oil from Singapore which is about $0.20 dearer then WTI or Brent crude.
/Smug mode.
Now not buying oil from them wont make them stop acting like idiots, they'll just be poor idiots. Even that is unlikely as they aren't going to run out of customers for their oil any time soon. But yes, the US should pull support from the Saudi's for many more reasons then this, that means pulling US forces out of Saudi bases (even the logistic bases) and stop selling them weapons.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
... then they would forge postings defaming Mohammed from all the nutcases who have called for this guy's punishment. Let's see how quickly things would change.