We live in a world where we get punished for being liberal. Raef Badawi, the Saudi rights activist is now sentenced to 7 years in prison and 600 lashes for setting up a liberal network and for ‘insulting Islam’. The Liberal Network is now banned. Anything ‘liberal’ or progressive or secular or scientific is anti-Islam. Isn’t it?
Saudi Arabia is part of our world. I don’t know how many people and how many states would sincerely condemn Saudi authority for its insanity? It is very alarming that Muslim countries are increasing influenced by Saudi Arabia. Non Arabic Muslims are often forced to follow Saudi culture. Free thinkers are getting executed, prisoned, exiled by almost all Islamic states. Violating freedom of expression has now become a synonym of Islamic culture.
For the sake of humanity, please stop the authorities from becoming completely insane. Islam may celebrate insanity, but most inhabitants of today’s earth do not.
Not only in Arabia but also in other Islamic countries besides very few exceptions like Indonesia orthodoxy remains same . Nobody wants to accept the truth.Those who want to flourish either leave their country or are banished like you .
I know it’s not a lot, but there is a movement to pressure the International Olympic Committee to ban Saudi Arabia from the Olympics. South Africa was banned for several decades, and I think that what’s going on in Saudi Arabia is more oppressive than anything that ever happened in South Africa.
In my daily interactions with Muslims, I find them so guilty of double-standards at every turn. Let alone their demand for “freedom of expression and the choice to wear a burqa” in Western/non-Muslim countries, even at community level, they demand these “Western/liberal rights” for themselves.
However, at the same community level, let alone the political level in Muslim majority states, they deny these same rights of freedom of conscience, expression and choice, to anyone that disagrees with their ideology. Hypocrites!
No, people are not being forced to follow saudi culture, there are people who really want to follow islamic culture. Bangladesh for example is not a islamic state but has a hard-line islamic culture. Free thinkers can write what they like but there is a place where you draw the line, no one will accept blasphemy. It is the west who goes around and poisons peoples mind and brain washes them with their filth.
Shariah law existed in western society under the guise of capital punishment. Although beheading and chopping off body parts is too extreme, now that capital punishment has been removed society is a mess, with fools playing the role of puppet government. At least other countries are not a mess because they have a lot more control.
Saudi Arabia has no influence on the islamic “world”… right… and monkeys have gills.
Blasphemy? What is really meant is criticism. Fuck that…
There is no god. Blasphemy or not?
That’s also a common statement for a free thinker.
Antii-blasphemy laws are rubber-stamp laws that can be used on *any* criticism of the system.
Of course you can say whatever you like but if you believe in god and the last and you are a true practising Muslim then you would fear the great fire and will not speak against the righteous way or make the wrong criticisms.
There are countries out there that are trying to live a serious life to reap the rewards of there next life in the hereafter not like a bunch of clowns that make a mockery out of everything and as a result the laws in their and society is a out of control mess.
Of course you can say whatever you like but if you believe in god and the last day and you are a true practising Muslim then you would fear the great fire and will not speak against the righteous way or make the wrong criticisms.
There are countries out there that are trying to live a serious life to reap the rewards of there next life in the hereafter not like a bunch of clowns that make a mockery out of everything and as a result the laws in their and society is a out of control mess.
jaffafa,
you are certainly entitled to believe as you wish, and express it in public. I would fight for your right to do so. Now can I have the same courtesy in return? Even if you don’t like what I say?
…yes, you can the same courtesy in return
….i was just saying….. or implying that perhaps everyday people get away with blasphemy, but against a very important and noble prophet who is very respected in the muslim world is no, no.
Saudi arabia is the heart of the muslim world since it is the direction where muslims pray everyday, 5 times a day. People try to follow islamically as possible following the islamic traditions. The best examples of following a good muslim life is in saudi.
Telling that you use the words “get away with blasphemy”, which implies that you think they should be punished.
There is no god, therefore Mohammed is not a prophet. He was just a person with delusions or a con man, nothing more.
Blasphemy or not? It logically follows from there is no god.
if there is no god how does the planet survive ? who makes the night in to day and the day into night ? how are all the planets, sun and moon in order ? how is it new flowers die and grow everyday ? how does a barren land get life after it rains ? where does the rain come from ?
I know you are gonna say it all happens when theres a big bang when all the atoms get together, but ok, where did the atom come from in the first place ?
Do you think the people who had near death experiences and went to heaven and back were all hallucinating ?
Jaffafa,
Your argument from incredulity* is noted and summarily dismissed. Most of your questions have readily been answered by science. But the real subject at hand is the punishment of Raef Badawi. I wonder if he’ll survive 600 lashes. and then 7 years in prison (if he survives). For expressing his opinion. That you hold the people perpetrating this atrocity on another human being in esteem shines a questionable light on your character. As much as I dislike islam and hold it in personal contempt (as I do all superstitions) I would never wish you to receive 600 lashes and 7 years in jail for anything you chose to express, verbal or written.
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance
Nothing is unstable, you know its position and momentum
Yes. And even if they’re consistent with each other, so are most computers reboot sequences. Once someone that’s “been to heaven and back” delivers verifiable information that they could not have possibly known, then it can be considered more seriously.
OK, for the sake of argument, the god that controls everything you mentioned exists, it’s not simply argument from ignorance / incredulity.
Demonstrate, using independent sources, that it’s Allah or JHVH. Koran / Bible / Torah saying so is not acceptable evidence, nor is anything that just asserts that. Independently verifiable facts only, no semantic games. That also means if you are trying to end the regress of everything has a cause, no special pleading on god(s), concrete, verifiable evidence why it itself doesn’t have a creator, and that reason must not be able to apply to the universe itself.
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where did science come from ?
It all goes down to one fundamental question.
Science was discoveries by men and knowledge and books expanded
Before even science was invented everything was answered in holy books.
You mean those holy books that said the sky was metal held up by columns and that the sun went around the earth? Those holy books?
Answered and correctly answered aren’t anywhere near the same thing. Those books only purport with reality by chance. Time to toss them to the side, they’re crutches.
If everything was answered in holy books what do we need science for? Show me where in any holy book the blueprints for a Hadron collider, an international space station, or a method for producing a vaccine. Men and women have sweated and toiled to learn about the universe around them. To have it hand waved away by an assertion that “holy books” already had it all figured out is in an insult to the people who do that work and truely make our lives better, not by some psychological placebo effect, but by real measurable progress.
“Before even science was invented…”
Science was not invented, human beings developed “technique” before there was written language.
“. I don’t know how many people and how many states would sincerely condemn Saudi authority for its insanity?”
Many people would condemn Saudi authority. The Saudi government is cartoonishly evil.
Very few states will condemn Saudi authority, because they all want the Saudi oil.
If we make oil irrelevant, by making lots of solar panels or something, I think perhaps the states will start listening to the people.