Raif's 1,000 Lashes, Saudi Wahhabism and Charlie Hebdo

"Let us tenderly and kindly cherish, therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write." ___ John Adams, 2nd President of the United States. ~~~~~ Saudi Arabian writer and Blogger Raif Badawi, 30, has been sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes, as well as a fine of $266,000. If he ever leaves prison, his life will be in ruins. His wife and three children have been given asylum in Canada. Her family has filed for divorce on the grounds of his supposed apostasy. Badawi's first 50 lashes were administered today, after Friday noon prayers, outside a Jeddah mosque. Accused of "insulting Islam," he is to receive 50 lashes every week for 20 weeks -- almost half a year. The lashing order says Raif should 'be lashed very severely,'" a twitter notice read. "If they lash him again next week we do not know if he is going to survive. He has no medical assistance," another notice said. His crime that was seen as "insulting Islam"? Badawi wrote : "My commitment is...to reject any repression in the name of religion...a goal that we will reach in a peaceful, law-abiding way." He is alleged to have criticized the Wahhabi clergy who run his country hand in hand with the Saudi royal family, which seems not to be able to handle questions, reasoned criticism or satire. There is only one opinion -- the dominant royal/majority one. Other opinions are severely dealt with, as in Badawi's case. Here in the West, a major role of government is to protect the minority from the majority, but the Saudi Arabian kingdom holds itself out as the keeper of the values of pure Islam, silencing all opinion that differs from the approved one. ~~~~~ For more than two centuries, Wahhabism has been Saudi Arabia's state religion. It is an austere form of Islam that insists on a literal interpretation of the Koran. Strict Wahhabis believe that all those who don't practice their form of Islam are heathens and enemies. Critics say that Wahhabism's rigidity has led it to misinterpret and distort Islam, pointing to extremists such as Osama bin Laden, the Taliban and ISIS. Wahhabism's explosive growth began in the 1970s when Saudi charities started funding Wahhabi schools and mosques from Islamabad to California. The American Public Broadcasting System's FRONTLINE interviewed Mai Yamani, an anthropologist who studies Saudi society; Vali Nasr, an authority on Islamic fundamentalism; Maher Hathout, spokesperson for the Islamic Center of Southern California; and Ahmed Ali, a Shi'a Moslem from Saudi Arabia. Here are the interview highlights that explain Saudi Arabian Wahhabi Islam. Wahhabi law requires that all citizens be Moslem. Saudi Arabians believe that their form of Islam is the real true form of Islam, and that other ways of practicing Islam are wrong. Saudi Wahhabi scholars play the role of clergy, based on the writings of Muhammed bin Abd al-Wahhab, who paved the road for Abdul Aziz ibn Saud, the patriarch of the Saudi royal family, to conquer the rest of the Arabian Peninsula and to rule. There is great cohesiveness between the Wahhabi scholars and the royal family, resulting in a Saudi Arabia theocracy. The government does not legally protect the freedom of religion. Attempting to acquire Saudi nationality or marrying a Saudi citizen requires conversion to Islam. Religious minorities do not have the right to practice their religion. Non-Moslem propagation is banned, and conversion from Islam to another religion is apostasy, punishable by death. Proselytizing by non-Moslems, including the distribution of non-Moslem religious materials such as Bibles, is illegal. The official form of Islam is Sunni, and an estimated 85-90% of Saudi citizens are Sunni Moslems, while10-15% are Shia. For non-Sunni Moslems, non-Moslems, and non-religious, "freedom of religion is neither recognized nor protected under the law" and Saudi "government policies continued to place severe restrictions on religious freedom", according to the 2013 International Religious Freedom Report of the US. As no faith other than Islam is permitted to be practiced, no churches, temples, or other non-Moslem houses of worship are permitted in the country, although there are nearly a million Christians as well as Hindus and Buddhists - nearly all foreign workers - in Saudi Arabia. Private prayer services are prohibited and Saudi religious police regularly search the homes of Christians. Foreign workers are not allowed to celebrate Christmas or Easter. Religious inequality extends to compensation awards in court cases. Once fault is determined, a Moslem receives all of the amount of compensation decreed, a Jew or Christian half, and all others a sixteenth. Saudi Arabia has officially identified atheists as terrorists. Saudis or foreign residents who call "into question the fundamentals of the Islamic religion on which this country is based" may be subject to as much as 20 years in prison.According to scholar Bernard Lewis, the Saudi Arabian policy of excluding non-Moslem from permanent residence in the Arabian peninsula is a continuation of an old and widely accepted Moslem policy.Classical Arabic historians tell us that in the year 20 after the hijra (Muhammad's move from Mecca to Medina), corresponding to 641 AD of the Christian calendar, the Caliph Umar decreed that Jews and Christians should be removed from Arabia to fulfill an injunction the Prophet uttered on his deathbed : "Let there not be two religions in Arabia." ~~~~~ Compare this repressive Saudi form of Islam with the universally agreed "creed" of Islam : the belief in one God, the belief in the oneness of his message, and the oneness of the human family. And the belief that devotion to God should be expressed in human rights, good manners, mercy, peace, justice, and freedom. The authenticity of these fundamental Islamic beliefs is clear. But the interpretation or the way Moslems approach life, should be a dynamic thing and should change from time to time. When Islamic beliefs are frozen at a certain period or at a certain interpretation, problems occur. In Saudi Arabia the problem is called Wahhabism, even though Muhammed bin Abd al-Wahhab was, in his time, considered a progressive. ~~~~~ Dear readers, Raif Badawi has been caught in the Saudi Wahhadi time warp. The Gatestone Institute, whose chairman is John Bolton, former US Ambassador to the UN, and whose board of directors includes Harvard law professor emeritis Alan Dershowitz, has published a long article giving some historical detail about Islam's suppression of free expression, saying this about Badawi's lashing and prison sentence : "Today the lashes of Raif Badawi stand with the slaughter at Charlie Hebdo as further symbols of the determination of many extremists to reject the norms of reason, tolerance, pluralism, equality, the Universal Declaration human rights and the value that begins every chapter but one of the Qur'an: mercy. Some people ask what inspires those who kill authors, cartoonists and journalists while others insist that it has nothing to do with Islam. If we do not learn, if our leaders do not learn, what hope is there for us? Today, we are all Charlie. And we are all Raif."