Telling the Truth, Facing the Whip

A week ago yesterday I was supposed to appear at the Sahafa police station to receive 75 lashes on my back. I had been sentenced by a religious court because of articles I had written calling for freedom of speech and criticizing Wahhabism, Saudi Arabia's official religious doctrine. At the last minute, I decided not to go to the police station and undergo this most humiliating punishment. With the nation at a virtual standstill for the holiday Id al-Fitr, the sentence remains pending. I will leave this matter to fate.

Even before the attacks on foreign housing compounds in Riyadh in May, many writers and intellectuals in the kingdom, myself included, were being bombarded with letters and e-mail and telephone messages full of hate. We still receive death threats from Al Qaeda sympathizers. I have informed the Saudi authorities of the threats and provided them with the names and numbers of some of the people involved, against whom I have also filed a lawsuit. So far, no official action has been taken.

The most recent government crackdown on terrorism suspects, in response to this month's car-bombing of a compound housing foreigners and Arabs in Riyadh, is missing the real target. The real problem is that Saudi Arabia is bogged down by deep-rooted Islamic extremism in most schools and mosques, which have become breeding grounds for terrorists. We cannot solve the terrorism problem as long as it is endemic to our educational and religious institutions.

Yet the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Islamic Affairs have now established a committee to hunt down teachers who are suspected of being liberal-minded. This committee, which has the right to expel and punish any teacher who does not espouse hard-core Wahhabism, last week interrogated a teacher, found him "guilty" of an interest in philosophy and put on probation.

cut

By Mansour al-Nogaidan
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/28/opinion/28MANS.html

with a government that supports the terror.

golly gee wiz - the GOP sells the same idea.

I wonder why?

told his followers that the greatest threat to Islam would come from within, and pointed to the place where Wahhabism started. Wahhab, who started this cult, did so because the Sufis wouldn't make him a sheikh. His own brother wrote him a letter telling him what he was doing was against the teachings of Islam. But he found a following and the whole cancer spread. May God in His Mercy and Compassion show the Wahhabis the Right Path.

:-)