GUARDIAN – BLOGS – ANDREW BROWN: Hamza Kashgari's tweets about Muhammad have led to a chilling online reaction from many in Saudi Arabia
In this country, and in the US, the judicial authorities make fools of themselves about Twitter. In Saudi and Malaysia, they may make themselves murderers. The case of Hamza Kashgari, a young Saudi journalist who has just been deported from Malaysia to face trial on charges of blasphemy, is one that should frighten and disgust anyone who cares about freedom of speech or religion.
His supposed offence was to have tweeted part of an imaginary conversation with the prophet Muhammad. "I have loved things about you and I have hated things about you and there is a lot I don't understand about you," he wrote; and: "I will not pray for you."
After six hours, he apologised for this, and then fled to Malaysia, en route to New Zealand, where he would have been safe. But after three days in Malaysia, he was arrested and shipped back to Saudi, where he faces the death penalty.
It is likely that he will not be executed, if he makes a sufficiently grovelling apology, though he will certainly be punished cruelly for something that is not a crime in any civilised society. This doesn't do much to excuse either the Saudis or the Malaysian authorities, who were under no compulsion to arrest him, and even less to deport him before his lawyers could lodge an appeal, despite the protests of both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Continue reading and comment » | Andrew Brown | Wednesday, February 15, 2012
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