Riyadh: The editor of a Saudi Arabian website could be sentenced to death after a judge cited him for apostasy and moved his case to a higher court, the monitoring group Human Rights Watch said on Saturday.
Raif Badawi, who started the Free Saudi Liberals website to discuss the role of religion in Saudi Arabia, was arrested in June, Human Rights Watch said.
Categories: Asia, Islam, Media, Saudi Arabia
There is no penalty for discussing religion. Specially in the land where the greatest of all prophets came to liberate all religions. It is highly bad of the religious leaders of Saudi Arabia to punish any one for religious beliefs.
In that way they will be punishing the holy prophet s.a.w.s. He had disagreed to the local beliefs of the Makkans. So was the prophet also to be punished as an apostate?? Not at all. The main good teaching of the Quran is “There is no compulsion in religion.”
If the maulvis are holding any Hadith about the killing of an apostate, they should throw that Hadith, being against the teaching of the Quran.
The wahhabis or ahle-Hadith give more importance to Hadith over the teachings of the Quran. That is the problem. The Hadith should be used to help and serve the Quran, not to take charge of the Quran.
We cannot have both things: “No compulsion” and “penalty for differing beliefs.” Let the maulvis present something from the Quran about punishing an apostate.
Death is a capital punishment. It cannot be awarded just on the basis of a Hadith only. Proof for it should come from the Quran.
Even Maudoodi sahib in his books “Rasaail o Masaail” (i,e, questions and answers) had admitted that proof for halaal and haraam and serious (capital) punishments should not be based on Hadith only. Proof should come from the Quran.
Where is Mr. Obama? The Champion of democracy, HR and Liberty Where is Nobel peace prize nominating committee ? where is UK and EU HR commissions? They all are very quick in attacking HR conditions in China and nominating its dissidents for prizes but in the case of Saudi Arabia they will criminally remain silent
There is no punishment for apostasy. We must know “Who is an apostate?”
The maulvis do not know the exact meaning of the Word “kafir” and the word “Murtadd” i.e. apostate.
I will describe the word apostate now and may come back for the word “Kafir” later.
Murtadd is that person who was a born Muslim or who accepted the religion of Islam by his/her free will, remained within Islam for some time but later felt some difficulty (discomfort, disagreement) in being a Muslim.
He announced that he is no more a Muslim, that he does not want to be a Muslim, that he is dis-satisfied with Islam. He may even say that Islam is a bad and useless religion. He himself says that he has nothing to do with Islam.
Such a person is an apostate. It is the person himself who says good-bye to Islam. He/she is not a person whom other people say “Oh, you have become a Murtadd (an apostate)”. Please see words in Quran “Wa man yartadda minkum..”
There is no punishment in Islam for such a person. Unless there be an ongoing war at the time, there is no punishment at all.
Please keep the definition of the Murtadd in mind because a wrong meaning is creating a lot of trouble.
There are not apostates in Islam only. People of other faiths may say good-bye to their faiths and join Islam. Would they be killed by their old leaders of other religions? What a bad idea to kill every one who changes his faith peacefully!!
Even Zakir Naik sahib is preaching punishment for the apostates. But he puts a condition that apostate should not preach his new faith. If he will preach he will be punished. It seems that was an after thought (and also bad thought) when he was confronted by a TV anchor about the punishment for apostasy. He said that apostate is to be punished. But later he modified his stand with condition of preaching. It was all wrong.
It is necessary for all Muslims to pay attention to the basic meanings of the important Quranic words.