Saudi Arabia has long been an exporter of extremist Islamic values as part of its Wahhabi sect. Despite our close alliance with the Kingdom, it imposes radical Islamic Sharia principles and denies basic rights to women, non-Muslims, and dissidents. In the latest outrage from Saudi Arabia, a court has sentenced a man to ten years in prison and 2,000 lashes for merely expressing his atheism on Twitter. It appears that the Saudi and Sharia courts are terrified that people could actually inform other Saudis of alternatives to Islam or different values. The fear and anger only appeared to grow when the Kingdom could not coerce the 28-year-old who refused to repent and stood by his human right to express his faith. We previously discussed this case, but Saudi Arabia is proceeding with the whippings as this man remains defiant.
The Saudis are the first to object to any country curtailing Islamic worship but it is also the first to deny the freedom of religion to non-Muslims. The Saudis will not even allow a church to be constructed in the country. Now it is sentencing people for merely acknowledging their faith or lack of faith on social media.
Saudi Arabia treats atheism as terrorism under one of its more notorious laws. That’s right. One of the greatest sources of actual terrorism in the world of Sunni radicals, Saudi continues to export extreme religious principles will defining atheism as terrorism.
The only reason the Saudis exist is because the Elite Establishment props them up. Saddam Hussein wisely tried to take them out, and he would have succeeded if not for the wasteful intervention of the Bush family, agents of the Establishment Elite.
Not only that, but the Elite Establishment got involved in a second phony war to benefit the Saudis and to create even bigger disasters. With Hilary Clinton, the Elite Establishment will again be firmly in control, which means that the Saudis will be safe and secure to commit more mass murders in the US.
But again, when that happens, the US won’t attack the Saudis, but will, instead pick some irrelevant nation to waste billions of dollars on and hundreds of thousands of lives.
So, whatever you do, just make sure you don’t vote for Donald Trump. We must continue to support the Elite Establishment as they know what’s best for most Americans.
The only reason the Saudis exist is because the Elite Establishment props them up.
The House of Saud have been consequential figures in the rough and tumble of politics on the Arabian peninsula for more than 200 years. The Nejd and the Hijaz are among the few areas of the globe which were never dependencies of any European power. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was formed of components of the Ottoman Empire in 1924 by the political forces on the peninsula least beholden to occidental powers. Over the last 50 years, the country has typically received minimal foreign aid (a dollar per inhabitant per year has been about normal) and has received none at all in the last half-dozen years. The country imports armaments, but arms imports currently amount in value to < 0.5% of the output of Saudi Arabia's non-oil sectors. It suffers from severe deficits in labor force development, so imports a great many skilled and unskilled expats. However, few of these are arriving from the occident. Most are South Asian.
Hmm, I thought only HRC had correct the record. My bad. The Saudis apparently have apologist trolls.
Autumn, people point out to you actual history and current affairs, which are invariably at a variance with whatever fiction you’re peddling today.
Friggin Saudis. Jeso.
SA is a totally twisted totalitarian regime. Ruled by rich despots and sick mullahs.
SA has NOT left its neighbors in peace – why do you think they gave all those “contributions” to the Killery Foundation? They are killing people in Yemen and actively sponsor terrorist activities around the world.
SA has NOT left its neighbors in peace –
There is no country in the Near East which has suffered an injury from Saudi Arabia since 1924 bar economic ones everyone on the wrong side of the terms-of-trade was suffering in 1973-74 and 1979-80. Saudi Arabia was among the least militant OPEC members, however.
SA is a totally twisted totalitarian regime. Ruled by rich despots and sick mullahs.
The word ‘totalitarian’ does not mean what you think it means. The country isn’t isolated nor under any general mobilization.
@art deco
re: “It’s orderly, with little or no political violence.” yeah, so was Germany under Hitler.
Uh, no. Germany had a vast apparatus of concentration camps, first erected in 1935. Saudi Arabia has nothing similar. Germany was also an aggressive and revanchist state, while Saudi Arabia is a status-quo regional power which has left its neighbors in peace. The whole point of the Nazi state was a disruptive national mobilization and it’s end incorporated an 8-digit death toll.
Autumn – you are quite right. Many of the princes live like promiscuous party animals, drinking, etc. Isn’t that always true of an unaccountable ruling class? The law does not apply to them, just the peasants.
Just out of curiosity, whose keeping tabs on ‘the princes’ to educate you?
@Roger J
Not our ally – only the RNC and DNC’s Clinton loves those savages
No one ‘loves’ them. Governments have business dealings with Saudi Arabia out of considerations of interest. There’s no point in treating them as pariahs.
I believe 500 lashes killed most men. 2000 sounds like a death sentence. These barbarians are our ally?
From the sound of it in the article, the defendant and the state are playing a game of chicken.
Saudi Arabia’s cold and cruel ways are an organic development derived from abiding features of the culture of the Arabian peninsula. They’re not precisely replicated elsewhere. They are not the imposition of a political claque.
One can, however, overstate the severity of the Saudi regime. The country does not imprison it’s population like Soviet Russia or Cuba. It’s orderly, with little or no political violence. There are political prisoners in Saudi Arabia, but at this point the ‘human rights’ lobby is reticent as to how many. The country makes excessive use of capital sentences. Currently, it passes down about 100 in a typical year (which is fewer than the number of homicides in Saudi Arabia in a typical year.
The country causes some nuisance problems (financing Wahabi mosques abroad), but otherwise operates only in its immediate vicinity and operates according to raison d’etat. It’s aided neighboring states with counter-partisan warfare, but from 1924 to the present has never gone to war with any other country in the palpable sense of the term. They are willing to co-operate with the U.S. government on various joint projects. I cannot figure why we should be hostile to them
@mitch
and you think this latest info matters how? HRC could strangle an infant on live TV and her supporters would insist it was a mercy killing!