Freedom and clergy – the “subversive” ideas of Raif Badawi – Tiroler Tageszeitung Online

Riad / Berlin (dpa) – When he was at liberty, knew him hardly anyone outside of Saudi Arabia. Only now, when he is in prison and gets beaten up by court order, track millions of people outside the Islamic Kingdom of the fate of the Saudi bloggers Raif Badawi.

Whether they are also interested in the philosophical and socio-political statements that had brought him in 2012 behind bars, shows this week, if at Ullstein under the title “1000 lashes” a book with texts of the blogger is published.

Some of translated from Arabic texts for readers have never been in Saudi Arabia, certainly not easy to understand. But some of his observations and thoughts also offer those who do not know the locked Kingdom, an interesting insight into a country that had been catapulted through the discovery of oil within a few decades from the Middle Ages to modernity.

European Middle Ages also attracts Badawi as a benchmark zoom – and to explain the powers of the clergy in Saudi Arabia. He writes: “Remember it once to the Middle Ages. Look, what state then European countries were! Thanks to the rule of the clergy, the so ruled in the name of God. “He urges his countrymen on to a fresh start, without the clergy. Without this new beginning “we simply continue to wallow in our ignorance. An ignorance that is already long no longer acceptable to a time when civilized nations enjoy life, “he added.

In a text of 2010 Badawi criticized, most Arab thinkers, it would have been out of fear made prior censorship habit around the core of their statements “herumzuwinden”. He writes: “The Arab societies must be interpreted as an ideology that every free thinking is a waste or exit from faith and morals.”

This is no idle mind game. Because of “apostasy” is punishable by death in Saudi Arabia. This is also the reason why the Koran citations were in the book published by the journalist Constantin Schreiber book with texts omitted from Badawi. The 31-year-old blogger, the process will probably soon be reopened wants to offer any other attack. Had

A criminal court liberal activists in May 2014. “insulting Islam” to 1000 strokes, ten years imprisonment fined. 50 lashes were administered to him on January 9 in front of a mosque in the city of Jeddah. After the case had caused an international sensation, enforcement has been suspended due to health reasons. Badawi’s wife lives with their three children now as a refugee in Canada.

The narrow band whose income will benefit the majority of the family, but certainly has comic elements. With biting sarcasm Badawi himself makes fun of an Islamic televangelist, who had requested astronomers would have to be finally rejected in their place of Islamic law because of their skepticism about the experts. Badawi advises NASA after the discovery of “Sharia Astronomy”, their telescopes but to leave “and instead to benefit from the knowledge of our Shariah astronomers whose perspicacity and ingenuity exceeds the vision of this corrupt Nasa telescopes far”.