Just in case you don't pay much attention to the really offensive acts going on in the world (as opposed to the blasphemous kind) this poor chap is called Raif Badwawi. He lives in Saudi Arabia (first mistake) and for the right royal crime of "writing a mildly edgy blog that criticised religion" he has been sentenced to 10 years in jail and 1000 (public) lashes (50 a week for 20 weeks) I can imagine his diary makes for quite a depressing read at the moment. Raif was lucky in that the prosecutors originally wanted to charge him with apostasy (simply leaving his faith); the sentence for that is death. So the next time someone tries to convince you that this whole Islamic blasphemy thing is just a few bad apples then slip this guy's name into the conversation and mention the fact that his homeland alone has a population of 30 million, see how they like them apples.
Does anyone now feel the urge to take an AK-47 to the Saudi judiciary? No, I didn't think so, even though such an act is truly offensive to any decent, moral and fair-minded person. Perhaps what is more telling is that you will struggle to find any Muslims getting overly upset by this, certainly none that are prepared to satirise such cases in public.
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