The IHEU posted on Facebook:

Mohamed Cheikh Ould M’kheitir is awaiting a Supreme Court ruling on whether he should be putting to death for writing a single online article – about how religion is used to justify slavery in his home country, Mauritania. The death sentence has already been upheld by the appeals court on the basis that he was an “apostate”. We are one of the few organizations campaigning on this case (we’re quoted several times in the article at the link). We’re trying to get other organizations involved and to put civil society pressure on the government. Please if you can, support our work here.

The International Business Times has the story:

Mauritania’s authorities face increasing calls for a young blogger, Mohamed Cheikh Ould M’khaitir, to be executed following his death sentence for “apostasy”. With just a month to go before the court seals his fate, can international pressure help to save his life?

In a case that has shaken the nation, the young Mauritanian blogger and engineer was sentenced to death for apostasy in December 2014 over the publication a year earlier of an article entitled “Religion, Religiosity and Craftsmen” on the Aqlam Horra news website. Islamic organisations in mainly Muslim Mauritania said that the article constituted an “insult” to Islam and the Prophet Mohammad.

Imams, scholars, political parties and members of the public called for his execution. However, human rights groups now believe that the country’s growing religious right is using M’khaitir’s case as a political tool as militancy grows in the nation of 3.6 million people.

I do so desperately wish human beings would stop thinking that putative insults to religions and “prophets” matter more than harms to people. It doesn’t matter if someone “insults” a religion or a “prophet.” If religions are true they can take care of themselves, and it they’re not they deserve to be insulted. What matters is how we treat actual people here and now.

According to Bob Churchill, spokesman for the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU), the likeliest explanation for the delay is that the court was wary about the security situation outside of the courtroom.

The campaigner believes that the authorities, which have portrayed themselves as a committed ally in the fight against the regional jihadi threat, face increasing pressure from Mauritania’s growing religious right, which is calling for the blogger’s execution.

“If they [the court] were going to accept his repentance, and ultimately release him, delaying an answer may have posed security threats if the news had gone through the crowd, which would have been very angry if the court had agreed to accept the repentance,” he said.

He added: “This isn’t like a spontaneous mob. These are organised radical Islamist groups trying to create trouble and trying to show their power. The majority have not read M’khaitir’s piece – it is a very political gesture. He is scapegoated.”

The scapegoating and the organizing wouldn’t work if there weren’t all this nonsense talked about insulting religions and prophets.

Campaigners have highlighted the similar case of Bangladesh where, amid growing tension between Bangladeshi secularists and Islamist radicals since 2013, the religious right started making excessive demands and was blamed for attacks on bloggers and atheist writers. At the time, IHEU urged the Bangladeshi government to avoid giving into these demands.

“Now we see radical groups murdering people with impunity. It may seem to the government that in the short-term it’s in their best interests to give in to people’s ‘religious’ demands [that M’khaitir is convicted]. But if they do, the fundamentalists will only be emboldened and the demands escalate. And that is true regardless of the international community,” Churchill explained.

Thin end of the wedge. Camel’s nose under the tent. Give an inch and they’ll take a mile. All that.

In a joint open letter to the Mauritanian president on 11 November 2015, campaigners Freedom Now, PEN America, Reporters Without Borders and Committee to Protect Journalists said this:

“Regardless of the court’s ruling, we ask you to instruct your government to ensure his physical safety inside and outside prison. Since his imprisonment two years ago, preachers have called for his death, according to press reports. Those who have spoken out on his behalf have themselves been labelled as infidels and received violent threats, according to news accounts.

In April 2014 you told reporters that you did not believe Mohamed was aware of the seriousness of what he had written. In this spirit, we ask you to acknowledge his repentance and ensure his safe release from prison.”

Please do.