A Saudi newspaper columnist, Hamza Kashgari, 23, faces the death penalty after being deported from Malaysia to Saudi Arabia. (See "Malaysia deports Saudi journalist accused of insulting prophet".)
His "crime" was to tweet this on the Prophet Muhammad's birthday:
"I have loved things about you and I have hated things about you and there is a lot I don't understand about you. I will not pray for you."
I can't say that I have loved much about the dear old Prophet either but there's certainly a lot that I detest about him, not least his nine wives and the backward ideology he has bequeathed us Arabs.
Don't get me wrong: I equally detest Jesus, Moses, Abraham, Buddha, Confucius, Marx, Lenin and many other idols of old and new, including Margaret Thatcher, David Cameron, Ed Miliband, Barack Obama, Nicolas Sarkozy, Vladimir Putin, Dmitriy Medvedev, Hu Jintao, Xi Jinping, Muammar Gaddafi, Hafez and Bashar Assad, Binyamin Netanyahu, Tzipi Livni and Mark Thompson.
But why should anyone be deported or face the death penalty simply for speaking his own mind?
This sad and potentially tragic story serves only to underline the truth in Kashgari's tweet. The Prophet Muhammad's personal flaws aside, he has bequeathed an ideology of intolerance that is inimical to debate and has guaranteed that the critical-thinking faculties of at least a significant minority of Muslims have atrophied, perhaps even physically.
Goodness only knows what evolution will do to the brain of the average Muslim as a consequence of this.
If you believe that Mr Kashgari should be left free to say what he likes as long as he does no harm to others, then please sign this petition and circulate this blog post far and wide and speak out as loud as possible before it's too late.
