Thursday 11 November 2010

Palestine: Atheist Arrested

A man from the Palestinian town of Qalqiliya has been arrested after publishing critical atheistic remarks about Islam on Facebook.

26 year old Walid Husayin faces a potential life prison sentence on heresy charges for "insulting the divine essence." Many Muslims in the town say he should be killed for renouncing Islam, and even his own family say he should remain behind bars for life.

"He should be burned to death," said Abdul-Latif Dahoud, a 35-year-old Qalqiliya resident. The execution should take place in public "to be an example to others," he added.

But wait a minute - Walid Husayin was arrested by for this "heresy" by the Palestinian Authority. Aren't they supposed to be the "moderate" alternative to Hamas? And aren't the vast majority of Palestinian Muslims supposed to be "moderates" who would balk at the idea of such intolerant attitudes?

The AP article heinously appears to carry water for the Palestinian regime on this one: it laments "the feeling in the Muslim world that their faith is under mounting attack by the West." It claims, with no evidence at all, that "[t]he Western-backed Palestinian Authority is among the more religiously liberal Arab governments in the region". And worst of all, it says in all seriousness, as if it were the mouthpiece of the government, "Husayin's high public profile and prickly style, however, left authorities no choice but to take action."

They had no choice, you see, because he was "prickly". Ouch.

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