Raif Badawi’s family have warned he could die if the 1,000 lashes are carried out. For the Muslim Times’ collection on free speech, click here
Source: BBC
Jailed Saudi blogger Raif Badawi wins Pen Pinter prize – BBC News
Saudi blogger Raif Badawi, who is in jail for “insulting Islam”, has won the Pen Pinter Prize for championing free speech. Mr Badawi is serving a 10-year sentence in Saudi Arabia and is due to receive 1,000 lashes. He shares the prize with British poet and journalist James Fenton. Accepting the award for Mr Badawi, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said the British government should “show moral leadership” and seek his release. “Raif should have been honoured for founding a website that allowed healthy public discourse in Saudi Arabia; he should not have been held behind bars, facing flogging,” he added.
Saudi Arabia enforces a strict version of Islamic law and does not tolerate political dissent. It has some of the highest social media usage rates in the region, and has cracked down on domestic online criticism.
Categories: Europe and Australia, Free speach, Free Speech
While I do not support that Raif Badawi should receive 1000 lashes for his writings I also do not support that he should win a literary prize just for simply annoying Muslims.
The blogger is said to have criticised the Saudi system which is generally seen as being among the most oppressive in the world. If what he did is interpreted as ‘annoying Muslims’, then all the talk about free speech and democracy having been upheld by the ‘prophet’ is noise making and grand posturing without substance.
Does it mean that everything done by Saudi Arabia meets the approval of all muslims? There is no system without defects and above criticism.
Instead of leading a campaign to free the writer he is accused of ‘annoying Muslims’.
There is an online campaign to get Karen Armstrong awarded the Noble prize for ignorance. Yet a man who has been defiant to tyranny and is a good example of moral courage is put down as a symbol of annoyance. He is left to languish in both the dungeon of the repressive oil-soaked desert kingdom and that of a conscienceless world.
It is not difficult to imagine what would have happened had Raif Badawi been jailed in the West for an offence far worse than what he is incarcerated for. The self proclaimed human rights activists would have been up in arms in condemnation of a system ‘stifling the twin freedoms of expression and conscience’. Now they remain blind, deaf and dumb especially as Barack Obama has supported the inhuman treatment of Badawi.
The double standard of tolerating evil from some quarters while vilifying others for the slightest infraction is obvious.
It was the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be on him) who upheld free speech. We never said it was the Saudi Government.
The ‘prophet’ upheld free speech by killing or causing to be killed those who disagreed with him. The Saudis are doing the exact same thing.