Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Al Jazeera's "The Stream" on Hamza Kashgari

Al Jazeera's "The Stream" has a good collection of up-to-date information related to the Hamza Kashgari case:
http://stream.aljazeera.com/story/saudi-journalist-faces-trial-over-tweets-0022055

A significant highlight of what you'll find there includes an English language translation of the full text of a long poem written by Kashgari last year titled "Out of Time: A dialogue with the Prophet". The three tweets posted by Kashgari that resulted in the accusations against him were excerpts from this longer poem.

They also have a video of a senior Saudi cleric calling for Kashgari's execution, and another video from 2009 of another Saudi cleric explaining why Islam is incompatible with freedom of thought and expression.

Al Jazeera has also found what they claim to be the "only known legal precedent" for Kashgari's case: a Saudi who was imprisoned for almost 20 years for the crime of "jokingly insulting" Muhammad. Ironically, this man, Hadi Al Mutif, was only released from prison earlier this year!

Al Jazeera has also collected snapshots of an Arabic language Facebook group calling for Kashgari's execution, news about protests in support of Kashgari around the world, and more. Check it out.

It is worth noting that Al Jazeera has actually done a better job of reporting on this case than the western mainstream media!