Demonstration
Here we go again. Saudi Arabia has sentenced a man to ten years in prison and 2,000 lashes for talking atheism on Twitter.
The 28-year-old reportedly refused to repent, insisting what he wrote reflected his beliefs and that he had the right to express them.
The hardline Islamic state’s religious police in charge of monitoring social networks found more than 600 tweets denying the existence of God, ridiculing Koranic verses, accusing all prophets of lies and saying their teaching fuelled hostilities.
So Saudi Arabia decided to demonstrate that the teaching of prophets does not fuel hostilities by sentencing a guy to ten years in prison, a huge fine, and 2,000 lashes for talking atheism on Twitter.
That makes perfect sense. For particular instances of “sense”.
The man would probably have suffered the same consequenses if he had repented, just to set another example. This way he will at least have saved his dignity. And the regime has just produced another counter-martyr.
I’ve got an atheist Saudi friend who just got accepted to a university in Cleveland, Ohio. He hates pretending to be Muslim so much that he basically never went out or did anything. He was a homestay student with me, my spouse and her family for a while before he ended up having to return to Saudi Arabia for a few years. Now we’re just hoping he can stay permanently. He’s also trying to get his sister out too, but she’s not quite old enough to travel abroad for college yet.