By Mark Aldrich - Who is Raif Badawi? Badawi is a writer from Saudi Arabia who started a blog entitled “Saudi Arabian Liberals,” then was arrested in 2012 and charged with “insulting Islam” and with apostasy for his writings. In Saudi Arabia and many countries, apostasy, the abandonment of a belief—in this case, belief in Islam—is as grave an offense as murder. A conviction on either charge, apostasy or murder, will lead to the same result: state-ordained capital execution. In Saudi Arabia, execution is conducted by beheading in a public square.
This is the sort of paragraph that got Badawi in trouble with Saudi Arabia’s ruling classes, the House of Saud and the religious clerics:
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