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    1000 Lashes: Because I Say What I Think
    1000 Lashes: Because I Say What I Think
    1000 Lashes: Because I Say What I Think
    Ebook72 pages1 hour

    1000 Lashes: Because I Say What I Think

    By Raif Badawi and Lawrence M. Krauss

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    About this ebook

    "Raif Badawi's is an important voice for all of us to hear" Salman Rushdie

    Raif Badawi, a Saudi Arabian blogger, shared his thoughts on politics, religion, and liberalism online. He was sentenced to 1,000 lashes, ten years in prison, and a fine of 1 million Saudi Riyal, over a quarter of a million U.S. dollars. This politically topical polemic gathers together Badawi’s pivotal texts. He expresses his opinions on life in an autocratic-Islamic state under the Sharia and his perception of freedom of expression, human and civil rights, tolerance and the necessary separation of state and religion.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGreystone Books
    Release dateJul 31, 2015
    ISBN9781771642101
    1000 Lashes: Because I Say What I Think

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      A very informative book, great writing, good information and wonderful.

    Book preview

    1000 Lashes - Raif Badawi

    Foreword by Lawrence M. Krauss

    RAIF BADAWI

    1000 LASHES

    BECAUSE I SAY WHAT I THINK

    Edited by CONSTANTIN SCHREIBER
    Translated by AHMED DANNY RAMADAN
    Greystone Books Logo
    Vancouver/Berkeley

    Copyright © 2015 by Raif Badawi

    Translation © 2015 by Ahmed Danny Ramadan

    Foreword © 2015 by Lawrence M. Krauss

    Endnotes © 2015 by Constantin Schreiber

    1000 Peitschenhiebe. Weil ich sage, was ich denke © by Ullstein Buchverlag GmbH, Berlin.

    Published in 2015 by Ullstein Verlag

    All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced,stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a license from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For a copyright license, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

    Greystone Books Ltd.

    www.greystonebooks.com

    Cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada

    978-1-77164-209-5 (pbk.)

    978-1-77164-210-1 (epub)

    Editing by Constantin Schreiber

    Copy editing by Shirarose Wilensky

    Front cover design by Sabine Wimmer,

    Berlin Cover photo courtesy of Ensaf Haidar

    Distributed in the U.S. by Publishers Group West

    We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the British Columbia Arts Council, the Province of British Columbia through the Book Publishing Tax Credit, and the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities.

    TABLE OF CONTENTS

    • • •

    Foreword

    Preface

    Editor’s Note

    Introduction

    1 Religious Vocation Entraps the Freedom of the Arab Thinker

    2 Defaming the Intellectuals and the Inquisition Courts: Turki al-Hamad as an Example

    3 Let’s Lash Some Astronomers

    4 No to Building a Mosque in New York City

    5 Yes! I Will Fight Theists and Religious Thoughts

    6 Tahrir Square Brought Students Back to Hard Work

    7 The Traveler’s Marriage and the Borrowed Ram

    8 The Kingdom Come of the Syrian Spring

    9 A Male Escort for Every Female Scholar

    10 The Day of the Nation

    11 Mixed or Divided

    12 Let’s Talk about Enlightenment

    13 Is Liberalism Against Religion?

    14 The Book

    15 The Arab Spring between the Secular Choice and the Myth of Examples

    Notes

    Original Publications

    Biographies

    Foreword

    • • •

    I wanted to break the walls of ignorance...

    RAIF BADAWI

    FREETHINKING AND Saudi Arabian are two descriptors that rarely appear in the same sentence, and for good reason. The former is officially outlawed by the government and religious leaders associated with the latter. For this reason, it is difficult to get a real sense of the difficulties experienced by those who live in Saudi Arabia and who do not want to be shackled by the chains of myth, hatred, and ignorance that are the hallmark of religious fundamentalism.

    Most freethinking young people choose to leave the country and work in a more enlightened environment, or if they choose to stay, they keep their views to themselves. One such individual did not: Raif Badawi. For that he was tried and convicted and originally sentenced to death, a sentence that was then reduced to ten years of imprisonment, one thousand lashes, and a fine of a million Saudi riyals.

    I confess I learned only relatively recently about Raif Badawi, following an article in the Guardian about his sentence and the fact that he had received the first installment of fifty lashes. I was sufficiently horrified that I relayed the article in tweets and posts so that others could learn of this most recent affront to human dignity by a dictatorial regime that is portrayed in much of the Western media and by the U.S. government as a friend of the West.

    Such is the power of propaganda in our society that the Saudi regime is portrayed as benign and friendly amid an otherwise violent and dangerous world in the Middle East. We read about ISIS, Iran, and Al-Qaeda but rarely about the violent medieval forms of justice meted out in our oil-rich ally.

    By attempting to silence those who criticize the status quo in their country, the Saudi government obviously hopes to not only better control those within its borders but also the perception of that country as seen by those from outside. Thus, it is more important than ever that the words of Arab thinkers and writers who oppose the oppression in their country reach out beyond its borders.

    After reading about Raif, I was led to examine the blogs for which he had been convicted. Far from being dogmatic and strident, as I had expected, they are often filled with irony and sarcasm. His blogs, largely composed in the period of 2010 to 2012, before his arrest, span a wide variety of topics, from his (premature, in retrospect) enthusiasm about the Arab Spring uprising then beginning in Egypt to his prescient

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