Saudi Writer Faces Death Penalty For Doubting Prophet on Twitter
Thomas W. Lippman, author of Saudi Arabia on the Edge:The Uncertain Future of an American Ally, gives the example of Hamza Kashgari as “an almost perfect microcosm of the dilemma facing King Abdullah and the princes as they try to balance their push for modernization with their need to maintain religious purity.”
In their public statements and glossy planning documents, the men who run Saudi Arabia talk boldly about an exciting future of prosperity and innovation built on full integration into the global economy and the development of a “knowledge society” of educated citizens.
They seldom mention the other Saudi Arabia — a retrograde, anti-intellectual and often cruel society gripped by religious extremism that has surfaced again in the case of Hamza Kashgari. His story is an almost perfect microcosm of the dilemma facing King Abdullah and the princes as they try to balance their push for modernization with their need to maintain religious purity.
