Hamza Kashgari, the detained Saudi writer accused of blasphemy, will be freed in the next few weeks after a court in Riyadh accepted his repentance, multiple sources said.
Human rights activist Souad al-Shammary tweeted that a Sharia court in the capital has ratified his repentance in the presence of his family, and that he showed his regret over what he has written about the Prophet.
الحمدلله تم التصديق شرعا ع إعلان توبة كاشغري ف محكمةالرياض بحضورأقاربه وأبدى ندمه ع ماكتبه لا عزاء لمصاصي الدماء من طالبوا برقبته يحيا العدل
I have tried to reach Kashgar’s lawyer but he did not answer his phone, but I have confirmed this through a friend-of-a-friend of the writer. Local news site Sabq cited sources that also confirmed the news.
High on what they seem to think is a victory in the Hamza Kashgari affair, religious conservatives opened another front by sending some of their young followers to protest against music, dancing and the mixing of men and women in the National Heritage and Culture Festival aka Janadriyah.
It all began when Sheikh Saleh al-Lihedan, former head of the judiciary, said that women should not visit Janadriyah. “My advice to anyone is to dignify their women, their wife, their mother, or anyone under his guardianship by not allowing them to go” to such events, he said.
Few days later, dozens of these religious conservatives, usually called “Mohtasbeen” headed to Janadriyah, where they clashed with security forces there. Few of them have been briefly detained. The incident was repeated the next day, and few other people were arrested as well.
Now some might think that those mohtasbeen are part of the Commission of Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (CPVPV) aka Muttaween or the Religious Police, but that’s not the case. This group, most of them young men in their late teens and early twenties, act as some sort of unofficial muttawaeen who find things like music, dancing and gender mixing objectionable and believe they have the right to attempt to prevent things like this:
I thought the story ended after the two scuffles on Wednesday and Thursday, but I was wrong. Yesterday, members of the official CPVPV squad in Janadriyah wrote a letter to their boss announcing they would go on strike until their demands are addressed. What are their demands?
Increase number of CPVPV squad in Janadriyah to 300 members.
Stop playing music on loudspeakers.
Provide a 100 female security guards squad to support them.
Stop intervention in how to do their job by anyone, including security forces and the national guard.
Ballsy move there, no doubt. It is not everyday that government employees in Saudi Arabia threaten to go on strike. At the end of the letter, they said they were doing this because without addressing their demands they would no longer be able to do their job in a manner that is satisfactory to God first, and to their superiors second. See, these guys are not doing this for the money. They do it because they seek reward from God.
However, this was not enough for them. Today, a group of 50 clerics led by Abdul-Rahman al-Barrak and Nasser al-Omar released a statement calling on the government to cancel Janadriyah and the upcoming book fair because they “include many violations of Sharia.”
What does it all mean?
I’m not quite sure, but it seems that the tide of the conservative wave that I wrote about last month keeps on rising, and that there are groups and individuals who want to take advantage of this be sweeping everyone and everything in their way.
Just a quick update on the Hamza Kashgari case since many people have been asking: The young man is now in detention, his family visited him and he is reportedly in high spirits and being treated respectfully. Severalsites and petitions have been set up to support him and call for his release.
Prominent human rights lawyer Abdul-Rahman al-Lahem has announced that he will defend Kashgari, arguing that he will push for this case to be handled by a committee in the information ministry instead of a Sharia court.
Meanwhile, several people on the right are claiming that Hamza is a member what they believe is a “sleeping cell” to spread atheism among Saudi youth. Al-Hayat has a thinly sourced story saying public prosecutors are likely to summon people that supported or agreed with Kashgari, which opened the door widely for something like a witch hunt.
People like Mohammed al-Hodaif are accusing Abdullah Hamidaddin of being the cell leader but so far they have failed to provide a strong evidence to support their claims.The two men faced off on TV today where al-Hodaif threatened Hamidaddin, who is currently traveling to the US, to return to the Kingdom for a trial in a Saudi court.
UPDATE 2/12/12 03:09ET: Hamza Kashgari has been deported to Saudi Arabia by Malaysian authorities, several news agencies reported. Malaysian human rights lawyers say they had a judge order to stop the deportation, but by the time they reached the airport the plane already took off.
Hamza Kashgari, a young Saudi writer, caused a firestorm when he posted a series of tweets on the birthday of Prophet Mohammad last week. In his tweets, Kashgari imagined a conversation with the Prophet in which he said they are equal, and that although he admires many of the Prophet’s characteristics there are also others that he disliked.
Saudi users on Twitter erupted with outrage, posting nearly 30,000 tweets on the topic in less than 24 hours. Many people believed that he insulted the Prophet by addressing him and speaking about him like that. They accused Kashgari of blasphemy, atheism and apostasy. Many said he must be punished and some said he should be killed. Others even went as far as threatening to kill him or offer money for his head.
The outcry resulted in a full U-turn by Kashgary, who deleted the controversial tweets and published an apology saying he has sinned and that he has now repented. He explained that what he wrote earlier was “feelings I erred in describing and writing, and that I ask God for forgiveness, but they don’t really represent my belief in the Prophet.”
The apology was not enough for many people, especially the religious conservatives who demanded that Kashgari be tried in a Sharia court. One of these people is a cleric named Nasser al-Omar, who appeared in a YouTube video weeping because he said he could not bear to see the Prophet insulted.
“These people [like Kashgari] should be put to trial in Sharia courts,” al-Omar said. “It is known that cursing God and his Prophet is apostasy. And the fact that he has repented with cold words will not probably save him in the court.”
Al-Omar and others insist that even if Kashgari has repented he should still be sentenced for apostasy, effectively calling for his death by sword. Al-Omar called on his followers to send telegraphs to the King, Crown Prince and the Grand Mufti to punish Kashgari.
Yesterday, several websites said that the King has ordered the arrest of Kashgari and today news came that he has fled the country. According to Al Arabiya’s sources, Kashgari had flown to Jordan then the UAE before reaching a country in southeast Asia.
The 23-year-old writer used to write a column for the Jeddah-based al-Bilad daily, but yesterday the information minister Abdul Aziz Khoja ordered all newspapers not to carry any article by Kashgari. “I have instructed all newspapers and magazines in the Kingdom not to allow him to write any thing and we will take legal measures against him,” Khoja said.
لقد وجهت بأن لا يكتب في أي صحيفة أو مجلة سعودية ؛ وسنقوم بالإجراء القانوني حيال ذلك.
How a couple of tweets by an obscure writer reached the King and resulted in an arrest order and a possible death sentence in the matter of three days is nothing short of astonishing. Saudi Arabia being a conservative Muslim country, the outrage over Kashgari’s tweets was expected. Remember the Danish cartoons? Nevertheless, this case escalated rapidly.
While I understand how many Muslims would take offense at anything that touches the prophet, I don’t think it explains the whole story. Yes, many feel strongly about such matters and therefor they reacted accordingly. However, it is clear that many on the right decided to take advantage of the incident to score points and make political gains. It was a low hanging fruit.
While some may perceive religious conservatives defending the Prophet’s honor simply as piety, others say there is more behind it, that this is actually part of a long-term plan.
“This is not spontaneous,” a friend of Kashgari’s told me. “Hamza has had people marking him since the Marriott affair and before.”
There is a disturbing “bloodthirstiness” about the conservatives’ reaction, the friend said, adding that Hamza is “just the first in a list they’re targeting.”
Ironically, Kashgari had a conservative upbringing. He was part of the many “circles for memorization of Quran” in Jeddah, and according to one source familiar with the matter, his old preachers helped convince him to delete his controversial tweets and apologize. However, these very same preachers refused to come to his defense publicly in the face of the rabid attacks by the conservatives.
Contrary to reports circulating in Twitter and some sites, Kashgari was not detained upon his arrival to the airport in southeast Asia. He is free, his friend told me, but remains worried about being extradited.
This controversy emerges as an equally contentious case is finally coming to an end.
Local media reported this week that the King has pardoned Hadi Al Mutif, a man who was sentenced to death in 1996 after being convicted of allegedly insulting the Prophet. King Abdullah did not confirm the death sentence as required under Saudi law and Al Mutif remained in jail for 18 years. He is expected to walk free later this week.
For some reason, the government here finds itself compelled to get involved in organizing cultural events even when they suck at it. Why? Maybe because they don’t allow non-governmental organizations that usually play such roles in other countries. Or maybe because they want to keep the matters of arts and culture under control. Anyway, they keep organizing these events and it is very rare that anything good comes out of them.
Recently, the Ministry of Culture and Information (MOCI) organized in Riyadh what they called the second intellectual forum. The word ‘intellectual’ here is a vague term used to describe a diverse group of people who work in the fields of arts and culture: writers, novelists, columnists, artists, journalists, etc.
This forum that took place in the Marriott hotel included discussion panels and meetings with senior government officials. It was also a chance for these so-called intellectuals, many of them have known each other for years, to meet and talk. Like most of these events, the forum almost passed unnoticed. That is, until al-Watan daily columnist Saleh al-Shehi tweeted this:
ما كان يحدث في بهو ماريوت على هامش ملتقى المثقفين عار وخزي على الثقافة.. آمنت أن مشروع التنوير الثقافي المزعوم في السعودية يدور حول المرأة
Translation: What happened in the Marriott lobby on the margins of the intellectuals forum is a shame and a disgrace.. I believe that the so-called cultural enlightenment program in Saudi Arabia is centered on women
That tweet generated some angry responses by other people who attended the forum. Author Abdo Khal, winner of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction aka the Arabic Man Booker, tweeted: “Your allegation has crossed the line. Either you prove it or face trial for libel. You should apologize before things get there.”
Abdul Aziz Khoja, the minister of information and culture, and whose this event is happening under his auspices, also took to Twitter to make his feelings clear:
ان يقفز النقد فوق اهدافه وآدابه ويصل الى مرحلة القذف والتشويه، هذا هو الخزي. ولا ازيد
Translation: For criticism to cross its goals and ethics and reaches the stage of libel and slandering, that is what’s shame. And I will say no more.
Al-Shehi was unapologetic. He insisted that as a good Muslim there was no way he could remain silent about what happened at the Marriott lobby. He also said that he plans to sue Khoja. This kind of talk struck a chord with the conservatives, who took his tweet and ran with it because it reaffirms their view of the so-called liberal intellectuals as a group of immoral men and women.
During a talk show on Rotana TV, Khal pressed al-Shehi to say what did he see exactly that he deemed too scandalous. The latter kept refusing to answer, but at the end of the show he agreed to provide one example: some women there did not cover their hair.
The horror. Seriously? All this fuss over a few strands of hair? People thought al-Shehi saw some orgy going on or something. I mean look at these photos: some really hardcore stuff, no?
Some people think the government must be thrilled to see the elite of society bickering over trivialities like this instead of demanding political reform. For a government that paid billions in money handouts and made some merely symbolic concessions to prevent the Arab Spring from reaching their shores, a controversy like this one is certainly a welcome distraction.
The past few months have seen a wave of conservatism that al-Shehi and his supporters seem more than happy to ride. Hardliners are on the rise, and that shows in the heavy-handed manner in which authorities are dealing with recent calls for reform.
Few days later, the organizers of an event for arts and culture in Riyadh were ordered to cancel all the musical segments in their program, and two days ago long-time activist Mohammed Saeed Tayeb was stopped at the airport when he tried to board a plane to Cairo to attend his daughter’s wedding there.
In July 2010, Saleh al-Shehi wrote about meeting Abdo Khal in a Parisian cafe, where “girls of all nationalities and ages were flying around us like butterflies in the Spring season.” Why is he now all worked up about some Saudi women not covering their hair? Halal in Paris, haram in Riyadh?
Saleh al-Shehi kept repeating the word “shame” to describe what he saw at the now-infamous lobby, but failed to provide any specific examples except for the uncovered hair of some women. If some free strands of hair offend his sensibilities that much, then he probably should not be there in the first place. However, there are many other things in the country that he, and all of us, really, should be ashamed of like injustice, corruption and discrimination.
The latest player on the Saudi media scene was born this week, and its creators decided to deliver it on a very special date: November 11, 2011, at exactly 11:11 KSA time.
Al-Sharq will also be the 11th general interest national daily newspaper in the country. I say ‘will’ because although the website was launched a couple of days ago, the print newspaper will not hit the stands until December 5. The editor-in-chief is Gainan al-Ghamdi, a veteran journalist who helped start Al-Watan daily in Abha back in 2000, and before that was the editor of Al-Bilad in Jeddah. Al-Sharq will be the second newspaper to be based in the Eastern Province. The first one is Al-Yaum, which has also recently relaunched their site.
I have had the chance to follow Al-Sharq development over the past few months because two leading men behind the site are good friends of mine: Fouad al-Farhan and Hasan al-Mustafa, the head of development and the site managing editor, respectively. Both of them talked with me several times during the development period and I offered them some small suggestions but by no means was I directly involved with the project.
The design of the site is clean and fresh, and it certainly puts them ahead of their competitors, but this should not come as a surprise to anyone. The site has a gray color palette, which some people on Twitter called “dull,” but I personally like it. I also like that the text has a lot of white space to breath, a fresh departure from the crowded condensed look of many news sites. It helps that there are no ads on the site, but I don’t expect that to last for too long.
Fouad says all what he cares about for now is content and traffic. Ads are “the last thing I care about about for now,” he said. “Content, then traffic, then ads. Why have ads placeholders when you have no visitors?”
For Fouad, al-Sharq could be the realization of a dream he has had for years.
In a US diplomatic cable released by Wikileaks, dated December 17, 2008, he told American diplomats that he and some friends are planning to launch a “new site as a Saudi version of the Drudge Report or the Huffington Post.” These plans never really materialized in the way he described them at the time, but a look through Al-Sharq homepage definitely bears some resemblance to HuffPo, especially the use of one lead story with a page-wide headline and big photo at the top.
The use of one lead story with a big photo HuffPo-style is something that I still can’t bring myself to like. But I like the use of big pictures on the homepage and throughout the site, although the choice and quality of the pics leave much to be desired. Another problem with the homepage is the lack of summaries for stories. A headline with a picture is not always enough, and it does not help with skimming if you are in a hurry.
The technology powering the site is a heavily customized version of the open source WordPress content management system, Fouad explained. Another important piece of the system is what he called “real workflows.” He added that building the right workflows with proper user restrictions was the biggest problem they ran into during the development stage. The target, he said, is “15 minutes max for content from start to finish.”
Content-wise, it is probably too early to judge the site as it’s been less than 72 hours since it went live. But it is worth noting that the Opinion section includes many names that don’t come from the usual journalism and/or academia background. The site also has Video section, but almost all of the content there is produced by TV channels like Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya. The only Al-Sharq video on the page was not really a video story, but rather a regular story with a video shot on a cellphone by the reporter that doesn’t rally add much.
Hasan al-Mustafa told me that the initial plan was to launch the site and paper together on 11/11/2011, but then a decision was made to delay the print edition launch which affected the site severely. “More than half of our staff were hired as print reporters,” he said. Delaying the print edition debut until December meant that these reporters are not working at full force yet, but the system is ready and tested for full integration between the site the paper product.
Hasan and Fouad have been working closely to ensure that Al-Sharq would bring something different to the market. Hasan has worked in TV and newspapers before; Fouad’s background is in software development and blogging.
“I’m not a journalist and not a media professional,” he said. “But I’m their first customer, and I want to build the news site I always wished to browse as a Saudi media consumer.”
His official title at the newspaper is “Development Manager” but it is clear that his influence goes far beyond that. He told me that they simply want to be different on all aspects: design, content, services and ideas. On Twitter, Fouad said what people see on the site is less than 10% of what they have in mind. “What’s coming will be exciting,” he said.
“Our intention was to send a message that we’re different from any Saudi newspaper or news site. Others here will follow us in few months or years but we’re the first.”
Two Saudi men were detained Sunday in relation to a YouTube video they produced about poverty in Riyadh, colleagues said. Feras Bughnah and Hosam al-Deraiwish were called by the police for questioning Sunday afternoon, and they are still in authorities custody in the police station in Sahafa district in northern Riyadh.
“We asked the guard at the police station if Feras and Hosam were inside the cell and he said yes,” said Asem al-Ghamdi, a reporter for the local news site Sabq who tried to visit the two men in prison yesterday. “The guard agreed to give them food that I brought for them, but he did not let us talk to them.”
Al-Ghamdi said he spoke with an officer at the police station who told him the issue is “simple” and that Feras and Hosam would be released Tuesday morning. However, as of Tuesday evening, the two men remain in detention.
While the detention appears related to the video, it is still unclear what was the exact reason for the detention, said one source who is following the case but asked not to be named for fear of retribution from authorities.
“One theory is that they have been detained because their YouTube video was shown on a TV channel owned by the opposition abroad,” he said. “Another theory is that authorities did not like the strong tone of the video and wanted to make an example out of these guys.”
Saudis online took to Twitter to comment on the issue and express their support to the two detained men. Using the hashtag #Mal3ob3lena (which is the name of the YouTube show), users posted more than 17,000 tweets in less than 24 hours since Monday.
“Those who say the truth are detained, while those who steal billions are free,” tweeted Sara Nasser.
Yasser Almisfer said he could never imagine that these two men would be detained because he knows them and he knows how much they care about the country.
“The idea of interrogating the creators of Mal3ob3lena is nauseating,” he tweeted.
UPDATE 10/20/2011 15:50 ET: It’s Thursday, close to 11pm Saudi time and no word on the release of #mal3ob3lena team yet. I spoke to another person familiar with the matter who told me he expects that Feras and his friends will be released in the coming few days.
“Police are waiting for the release order from the governate,” he said. Knowledgeable on the legal process in the country, this person described the detention as “strange,” adding that probably the reason for delaying their release is to send a message to bloggers and activists that there is a line that they should not cross.
“Come on!” he said, “where are we now? Why are these old ways making a comeback? Why are they trying to strangle the future of this country?”
UPDATE 11/1/2011 2:30 Istanbul: After two weeks in detention, Feras and his crew have been released.
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