Primitive thinking

An article came up yesterday which tells a thoroughly modern story about an internet sting using that most socially cutting-edge of human inventions, Facebook, to catch someone red-handed in the West Bank town of Qalqilya. The only problem with the story however is that the crime this person has committed is one of the oldest and yet most bogus of all crimes ever invented by man in order to control other men, blasphemy.

The 26 year old man accused is supposed to have been making secret rants against Islam and God on his blog. Two things struck me firstly that he is the son of an Islamic scholar (so much for supposedly irrefutable and perfect nature of the message of Islam!) and secondly at its peak there were over 70,000 visitors to his blog (mostly from Arabic countries), clearly someone found what he was saying interesting! As an example of some of the things he's been saying here is a quote from the blog "Islam is a "blind faith that grows and takes over people's minds where there is irrationality and ignorance." In a response which is seeped in irony, local practitioners of the "religion of peace" are calling for his death by public burning, if he's lucky he may escape with life in prison.

The Palestinian Authority demands support from the "secular West", I think they are right to do so as many injustices have been dealt their constituents over recent years many of which go unchallenged. However, if that same authority feels it's OK to subject their own people to it's very own flavour of medieval injustice then that support needs to be reconsidered, the well-being of this particular individual would seem to be better served under the authority of a secular (and free) Israel?