There’s a report in Stern, in German, that Raif Badawi’s case has been sent by the Jeddah Criminal Court to the High Court. Elham Manea took it seriously enough to share with Ensaf Haidar, and Ensaf shared it with everyone.
That could be either good or bad; it’s unknown which.
But don’t worry – the OIC just told us that
Islam, which Saudi Arabia – a founding member of the OIC – is governed by, is centered on the values of justice, compassion, equality, tolerance and the notion of human vicegerency.
So obviously Saudi Arabia isn’t going to behead Raif for expressing an opinion about religion that the Saudi rulers don’t share. That wouldn’t be just or compassionate or egalitarian or tolerant.
Vicegerent: a person regarded as an earthly representative of God or a god
How can a government founded on “equality” regard someone as an earthly representative of god? Horsepuckey.
And they wouldn’t want to unilaterally impose their cultural values on someone who is of another of that great diversity of values.
@zubanel: The values of the OIC are not “cultural values”, they are based on Sharia Law, which is the TRUTH as handed from Allah to Mohammed, and upon which real human rights are based.
As for imposing their cultural values on others, I believe that their argument would be that Raif Badawi is a Muslim*, therefore he has no choice but to have Islamic values, and that is what he is being judged by, and what right do we westerners have to interfere.
*And, by way of Catch-22, if he wants to stop being a Muslim, he has committed apostasy, which is itself punishable by death.
And, by way of Catch-22, if he wants to stop being a Muslim
By way of catch-22 he is actually an atheist, being born without belief. Unless relious people are able to show how their beliefs are encoded in the brain.
@Marcus: I’m certainly not saying that culture or nationality specifies religion, but it is my understanding that Raif Badawi was in fact at one point a practicing Muslim. And according to my understanding of Sharia, apostates are treated differently from those who have never been believers (though both are subject to various punishments (including the death penalty) for numerous infractions.
Now having said that, I will go on to clarify that I find it odious to the point of obscenity that people would consider that being part of Sharia somehow makes it acceptable to detain, torture, and threaten to kill another human being on the basis of a philosophical disagreement, regardless of how “sincerely held” the beliefs are.