Please also read my article The Hamas Split and the Palestinian Political Mess
By Barry Rubin
Nageeb Kashgari is a young man in a lot of trouble. The 23-year-old Saudi has been spirited back to his country from Malaysia in a manner reminiscent of a kidnapping to be put on trial for his life.
His crime? To write three Tweets that Saudi clerics have deemed to be heretical. The lynch mob is baying for his blood. Nobody in the world is helping him. Kashgari might well be doomed, despite his quick apology and erasure of the Tweets.
For details on his case and situation click here.
Even if Kashgari were an atheist or someone who renounced Islam or did indeed violated its precepts his freedom of speech and religion should be defended. But what is most interesting about his case is that he did not really do any of these things. He merely expressed a liberal, modernist-style interpretation of Islam, the kind of thing that developed in Christianity—and was sometimes punished then–about 250 years ago and became very common 150 years ago.
To read the rest of this article, click here.
About Barry Rubin
