Saudi Man Gets 10 Years, 2,000 Lashes Over Atheist Tweets

[muriel_volestrangler]

A court in Saudi Arabia has sentenced a man to 10 years in prison and 2,000 lashes for expressing his atheism in hundreds of Twitter posts.

Al-Watan online daily said Saturday that religious police in charge of monitoring social networks found more than 600 tweets denying the existence of God, ridiculing Quranic verses, accusing all prophets of lies and saying their teachings fueled hostilities.

It says the 28-year-old man admitted to being an atheist and refused to repent, saying that what he wrote reflected his own beliefs and that he had the right to express them. The report did not name the man.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/saudi-man-10-years-2000-lashes-atheist-tweets-37240302

This is a new case, not Raif Badawi who is already in jail, and still might get more lashes.

[RKP5637]

1. What a F'en SH**Hole pit!!! n/t

[Divernan]

2. How many lashes can one man survive?

Saudi Arabia metes out by far the strictest lashing sentences in the Muslim world. Both Sudan and Iran employ the practice but usually stick to the more moderate 40 to 80 strokes prescribed in the Quran. The most severe lashing assigned by a modern Saudi Arabian judge took place in 2007, when two men received 7,000 strokes each as punishment for sodomy.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2008/11/how_many_lashes_can_one_man_take.html

There were protests in Egypt this week after an Egyptian doctor was sentenced to 15 years in prison and 1,500 lashes by the Saudi Arabian government for prescribing medicine to a princess that "drove her to addiction." The wife of the convicted doctor worried publicly that the sentence would kill him. How many lashes can one man stand?

It depends on how you're lashed. It's very unlikely that the doctor will die from his sentence if it is administered in the usual Saudi Arabian way—i.e., broken up into weekly bouts of 50 lashings each. (Women are given 20 to 30 at a time.) But a string of regular punishments administered over a span of seven months could still be dangerous. After just one round of lashings, he could suffer lacerated or bruised skin. More serious problems are likely to arise after repeated, weekly abuse—including nerve damage and infection.

Saudi Arabia does have some safeguards to protect the health of the person being lashed. For example, doctors inspect the medical condition of a prisoner ahead of time to determine whether he or she is fit to be lashed. (There tends not to be a post-lashing inspection.) And according to Islamic law, a flogger is supposed to hold a copy of the Quran under his arm to curb his range of motion and ensure that the strokes are not too powerful. Usually, the lashes are applied to the back, but they can also land on the legs and buttocks, according to firsthand reports. (The more varied the blows, the less likely they are to cause serious damage; hitting the same spot over and over increases the likelihood of breaking skin and causing infection.)

More forceful whippings, like those often administered to slaves in pre-Civil War America, are much more dangerous. Lashes with a leather instrument or paddle and a full range of motion have the potential to cause permanent damage to the internal organs and muscles, severe blood loss, shock, and maybe death. If the doctor received his 1,500 weaker strokes all at once, rather than over a seven-month stretch, the outer layer of his skin would be shredded, and he'd be at even greater risk for serious infection.

Few cases of death by lashing in the Muslim world have been reported. (People are lashed in non-Muslim countries as well—for instance, the Bahamas reinstituted flogging in 1991.) In 2004, a 14-year-old Iranian boy was killed while serving a sentence of 85 lashes; the person in charge of the punishment misfired, striking his head rather than his back, causing a brain hemorrhage. (A metal cable was used for the lashing in that case.) And in 1998, a Sudanese man was flogged to death by public-order police, but it's unclear how many lashes were administered and with what force.

[SoLeftIAmRight]

3. It is a very strange world we live in.

I am shock by reality.

[MariaThinks]

8. this is the reality

a true religion would not be afraid of discussion or even criticism.

cults like scientology resort to punishment for anyone who is under their influence and who criticizes them.

[LeftishBrit]

4. Scary and disgusting

For background, see:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/saudi-arabia-declares-all-atheists-are-terrorists-in-new-law-to-crack-down-on-political-dissidents-9228389.html

At the very least, Saudi Arabia has no business being on the UN Panel on Human Rights:

https://www.change.org/p/ban-ki-moon-jan-egeland-remove-saudi-arabia-from-the-un-panel-on-human-rights

[TeddyR]

5. I'm a realist

And understand that politics make strange bedfellows. But I am ashamed that the United States is allied with a country that subjects its citizens to punishment with a whip for simply exercising freedom of thought. There are too many countries that are stuck in a medieval mindset, and we should not excuse or condone this type of barbarity.

[Warpy]

6. Nothing pisses a powerful theocrat off like the denial of consensus in his fantasy life.

Punishments are getting more frequent and more severe in the Wahab paradise of Saudi Arabia because the royals know their days are numbered. They can force medievalism on their population only temporarily and they know it, especially in these days of satellite dishes and world wide smart phone linkups.

When the end comes, it'll make ISIL look like a tea party.

[MariaThinks]

7. i am so disgusted. islam allows no difference of opinion

anywhere it is in the majority.

[Major Nikon]

9. Atheist Michael X. Mockus was convicted and imprisoned for blasphemy less than 100 years ago

We aren't all that far behind.

[MariaThinks]

10. so 'we' have changed. 100 years ago is nice to learn from, but this is happening today

how will it change if there is no will to call it out?

[Major Nikon]

11. I'm not sure we changed all that much

It's just that our judicial system offers better protection against arbitrary adverse actions. I'm sure there's a significant number of politically influential people out there who would be all for enforcing Mosaic law if they thought it were possible.

[MariaThinks]

12. please tell me specifically which democratic country is giving lashes to someone

who makes a religious statement.

[Iggo]

13. That's our friends, right?

[mr blur]

14. But they're our friends! Creepy Cameron has just proudly sold them lots of arms -

on the same day that the EU parliament voted for an embargo on arms sales to Saudi ...

Ah, that black gold and hot lead - who could resist doing business with these friendly folks?