Saudi Arabia doubles down on Atheism; New laws declares it equivalent to terrorism
- Apr 1, 2014
- 2 min read
ENKI (lit: lord of the world)
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Simcha suggests some very intriguing motivations behind Constantine’s adoption of Christianity as the Roman state religion.
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Atheists, peaceful protesters and those who go to fight abroad have all been brought under the auspices of new “anti-terror” laws.
Saudi blogger and activist, Raif Badawi, currently serving his 7-year prison term for “insulting Islam”, may soon appear in a higher court on graver charges of apostasy. If found guilty, he could be sentenced to death.
We’ve seen before how Saudi pundits find it easy to conflate atheism and terrorism, but now it’s official: Saudi Arabia’s new terrorism laws say outright that nonbelievers and others who commit thought crime are the same as violent terrorists.
Abdul Aziz Qassem, writing for the Saudi Gazette, is in high dudgeon over “The Global Index of Religiosity and Atheism,” a 2012 poll conducted by WIN-Gallup International. He writes:
The poll showed that the percentage of atheists in Saudi Arabia is the same as in advanced European countries like Belgium. The strangest part in the poll is the finding that the number of atheists in Saudi Arabia reached five percent. This makes the [Saudi] Kingdom the first country in the Islamic world where the number of atheists have crossed the five-percent mark, which is more than the percentage ratio of atheists in secular countries like Turkey and Tunisia.
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