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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 worry about future attempts to establish an Islamic caliphate in the region. But the heart of his writing goes beyond considerations of politics elsewhere; it examines the hypocrisy, and the consequences of that hypocrisy, associated with the strictures imposed upon free and open discussion within Saudi Arabian society.
I was initially particularly taken by a sarcastic piece related to my own field of study, written after a television preacher in Saudi Arabia called for astronomers to be punished on the grounds that they encouraged skepticism about sharia law. In “Let’s Lash Some Astronomers” (p. 19), Badawi exhorts, “Truthfully, I am paying full attention to these preachers. They are teaching us all about a fact that was hidden from us: There seems to be a science called the Sharia Astronomy that I wasn’t aware of. What an interesting and beautiful concept that is. In my humble experience, and my dedicated research in the matters of the universe and its planets, I’ve never come across anything like it. I call upon NASA to abandon its telescopes and take advantage of our sharia astronomers. It seems to me their sight is sharper than those broken telescopes at NASA.”
For statements such as this Raif was sentenced to death! What makes this particularly repugnant, at least to me, is that ridicule is of vital importance in a free society. No subject should be above ridicule. Nothing should be so sacred as to be protected from humor, for fear that humor might induce reflection, and reflection might induce questioning, and questioning might induce freethinking.
This is precisely why people like Raif Badawi must not be silenced. Theocracies, like the one in Saudi Arabia, rely on preserving ignorance and fear as way of maintaining control of people’s minds and actions. Swords and bombs ultimately have only temporary impacts in changing circumstances. Once people’s minds are opened, however, there is no going back. That is why Saudi Arabia risked the consternation of the outside world by imprisoning an otherwise harmless young man and subjecting him to torture and isolation.
And that is why we need to support Raif and others like him who are brave enough to stay within the borders of their homeland and use the weapons of their pens, computers, and voices to fight for freedom of thought, expression, and action. People sometimes thank me for being brave enough to speak out on various issues, but this is all done within a society where the most likely negative response is hate mail or angry tweets. But the kind of bravery exhibited by those who speak their minds in countries where doing so puts them at constant risk is true bravery that should be celebrated by all of us. Raif himself expressed concern about this very fact when he wrote in 2010: “I’m really worried that Arab thinkers will migrate in search of fresh air and to escape the sword of the religious authorities.”
The writings in this volume are simple, sometimes naïve but always heartfelt and thoughtful. The prose is clear and provocative. They offer readers a window into the minds of all those young Saudi Arabians who yearn for their country to enter the twenty-first century. These young people are the hope for the future, and we need to support them and oppose those who oppress them.
These young people, like Raif, do not want to violently overthrow the Saudi regime. They want to offer an alternative that can drag their country into the future. They recognize that religious fundamentalism is holding millions of people back from economic prosperity, health, and safety. As Raif so poignantly put it, when urging the separation of church and state: “Secularism respects everyone and does not offend anyone... Secularism... is the practical solution to lift countries (including ours) out of the third world and into the first world.”
Regardless of your views of religion and its place in the human condition, all those among us who are lucky enough to live in a society where we are free (albeit within the constraints of somewhat limited access to media largely dictated by those with wealth and power) to ridicule and criticize need to show solidarity with those, like Raif, who, because of an accident of birth, are less fortunate as they struggle for a better, freer world. We can do this by making sure writers like Raif are not silenced and the harsh but beautiful light of reality is allowed to shine on all of us.
LAWRENCE M. KRAUSS
Phoenix, Arizona