Saudi Arabia declares all atheists are terrorists in new law to crack down on political dissidents

[cleanhippie]

Saudi Arabia has introduced a series of new laws which define atheists as terrorists, according to a report from Human Rights Watch.

In a string of royal decrees and an overarching new piece of legislation to deal with terrorism generally, the Saudi King Abdullah has clamped down on all forms of political dissent and protests that could "harm public order".

The new laws have largely been brought in to combat the growing number of Saudis travelling to take part in the civil war in Syria, who have previously returned with newfound training and ideas about overthrowing the monarchy.

To that end, King Abdullah issued Royal Decree 44, which criminalises "participating in hostilities outside the kingdom" with prison sentences of between three and 20 years, Human Rights Watch said.

Yet last month further regulations were issued by the Saudi interior ministry, identifying a broad list of groups which the government considers to be terrorist organisations - including the Muslim Brotherhood.

Article one of the new provisions defines terrorism as "calling for atheist thought in any form, or calling into question the fundamentals of the Islamic religion on which this country is based".

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/saudi-arabia-declares-all-atheists-are-terrorists-in-new-law-to-crack-down-on-political-dissidents-9228389.html

FYI to all the 'persecuted christians', this is what actual persecution looks like.

[Fred Sanders]

1. Meaning Britain and America will be hot to sell them more state of the art and expensive weapons?

What can be done about it:

http://www.dw.com/en/cameron-backs-out-of-saudi-deal-amid-concerns-over-public-flogging-case/a-18779490

A spokeswoman for the government said the decision to pull out of the deal was not related to the case of Karl Andree, the Briton being held prisoner in Saudi Arabia.

However, she did not acknowledge the case at the same press conference, calling it "extremely concerning" and telling reporters Cameron was planning to write to Riyadh over the issue.
'Potentially a death sentence'

The 74-year-old Andree was sentenced to prison for 12 months by Saudi authorities a year ago after being caught with alcohol. Though he served his time, the Briton is slated for further punishment - up to 350 lashes in public.

The man's son asked Cameron to intervene. "He's an old frail man and I fear this lashing sentence is potentially a death sentence for him," Simon Andree said, according to Reuters news agency.

Britain maintains close ties with Saudi Arabia, providing the country with many of its weapons. Human rights group Amnesty International called on Downing Street to stop its arm supply to Riyadh, which is also participating in a controversial war in Yemen.

Stop the Saudi genocide in Yemen..stop the arms flow!

[JackInGreen]

2. Our key middle eastern ally Boys n Girls

Aint it grand?

[cpwm17]

3. The US picks the worst ones. n/t

[rug]

4. This is what scouring the internet looks like.

"April 1, 2014"

Here's the thread when it actually happened.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1218122155

Not much interest then.

[struggle4progress]

5. Saudi Arabia has no written penal code. And the country is a monarchy, under a charter

containing many vague generalities and few specifics, Chapter 6 Article 52 of which asserts: The appointment of judges and the termination of their duties is carried out by Royal decree ...

We should therefore suspect that criminal justice in Saudi Arabia can be capricious, reflecting the politics of the ruling class -- and these politics will be necessarily influenced by individual desires for personal wealth and power

English text of Royal Decree 44 can be found here. It is quite sweeping and includes ... pursuit of unsettling the social and national fabric, or the call for, participation in, or promotion of sit-ins, demonstrations, gatherings, collective statements, or any actions that touch the unity and stability of the Kingdom ...

Catch-all laws like this should be regarded primarily as fits-all tools for social control

[edhopper]

6. mix of religion and politics

result are oft times ugly.

[struggle4progress]

7. The problems posed by Saudi Arabia go far beyond issues of mixing religion and politics

A Maid’s Execution
BY BASHARAT PEER
JANUARY 11, 2013

... On Wednesday, the Saudi Arabian government beheaded Rizana Nafeek, a Sri Lankan woman who had worked as a maid ... She said that she had been bottle-feeding him when he choked. Her employer, Naif Al-Otaibi, accused her of strangling the child ... Nafeek was tried .. without legal representation ... “I worked in a garage as a mechanic, but I didn’t make enough. I got married and had a child. So I came here. I thought I am going to Mecca. I will get to perform the Hajj and earn a lot more than I ever would,” he said. “I didn’t know people here would treat us like dirt” ... Sumiati Binti Salan Mustapa, I learned, was a twenty-three-year-old Indonesian maid who had been hospitalized in the Saudi city of Medina in November of 2010, after her employer had cut off her lips with scissors, burnt her back with an iron, pulped her legs with beatings, and broken a finger ... Days after her ordeal, Saudi employers murdered another Indonesian maid, the thirty-six-year-old Kikim Komalasari, whose body had been dumped in a garbage bin ... In yet another incident in the Saudi capital of Riyadh, a forty-nine-year-old Sri Lankan maid named Lahadapurage Daneris Ariyawathie had nails and metal objects hammered into her by her employers in March, 2010, after she complained of being overworked ...

[edhopper]

8. What are you saying the

basis of the problems are.

Surely you are not saying their brand of Islam is not involved?

[struggle4progress]

9. See #5 upthread.

Saudi Arabia is a fabulously wealthy country, entirely controlled by its king and his family, who are subject to no oversight and who are constrained by a vague charter

The accused in this oligarchy have no enforceable rights; and the definition of crimes and punishments are effectively left to judges, as well as the rules governing proceeding -- except that the death penalty is always imposed in certain cases, though nothing prevents it from being applied in other cases as well

So in Saudi Arabia, people can be and have been sentenced to death merely for (say) participating in demonstrations

Meanwhile Saudi money can be and is used to import impoverished workers from abroad; and under prevailing practice such workers have no defense against abuse and often are not even free to return home without the consent of their employers

You are, I suppose, free to blather glibly that the real issue here is "religion" -- but such ideological analysis sheds no useful light I can see

[edhopper]

10. I was going to respond

in a more nuanced and clarifying way.
But your last sentence was such insulting bullshit, i'm not going to bother.

[cleanhippie]

11. You'd only get another Google-galop if you did.

[Act_of_Reparation]

14. The only person blathering here is you.

The ambiguity of the Saudi legal system stems from the country's lack of codified law. The law of the land is Sharia, and judges are religious scholars with particular knowledge of Islamic jurisprudence. Each judge is given leeway to interpret the law in his own particular way.

This arrangement has existed in more or less its current form since 1744, when Saudi progenitor Muhammad bin Saud struck an alliance with cleric Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab. Wahhab supported Saud in his conquest of the Arabian Peninsula, and in return Saud gave al-Wahhab and his clerics authority over issues of religion and morality.

In short: the laws are religious laws, the judges are religious scholars, and the royal family derives its power, at least in part, from the consent of Wahhabi clerics.

But religion is not the issue.

[struggle4progress]

15. That may be the Saudi narrative, but it manages to ignore the Ottoman empire, WWI, oil, and WWII.

Wahhabist ideology did not mysteriously sweep across the Arab peninsula: its political history and success are tied closely to various geopolitical matters

The 1744 power-sharing agreement, between Ibn Abd al-Wahhab and Ibn Saud, doesn't necessarily signify that Ibn Saud established Diriyah for religious reasons: it's credible that he thought he could supply the military force, and Ibn Abd al-Wahhab could supply the ideology, needed to construct a state for Ibn Saud and his descendants to rule. The relationship of the 1744 agreement to personal and familial fortunes is clearly shown by the marriage of Ibn Abd al-Wahhab's daughter to Ibn Saud's son, Abdul-Aziz, who became ruler of Diriyah on Ibn Saud's death

The Ottoman empire largely ignored the resulting petty conquests until the third ruler of Diriyah, Abdullah bin Saud, son of Abdul-Aziz, began to annex portions of Hejaz, including the cities of Mecca and Medina. Then the empire took notice: Diriyah was dismantled in 1818 using Ottoman forces from Egypt, and the chief trouble-makers, including Abdullah bin Saud, were executed

This, of course, set the stage nicely for the descendants of Ibn Abd al-Wahhab and Ibn Saud: they could mythologize their time as ruling families of Diriyah as a golden era of true traditional Islamic rule in the region and could portray the destruction of their sparsely-occupied fiefdom as a result of corrupt intervention by "not-Islamic-enough" Ottoman outsiders

Since the Ottomans neither destroyed the family, nor prevented it from re-establishing control over much of the same area, power-struggles continued. Ibn Saud's grandson, Turki ibn Abdallah ibn Muhammad, ruled Nejd intermittantly between 1819 and 1824; and his son Faisal at times between 1834 and 1865. Between 1865 and 1875, two half-brothers (Abdallah ibn Faisal ibn Turki and Saud ibn Faisal ibn Turki) in the same family fought over control of Nejd. After the death of Saud ibn Faisal ibn Turki, the family feud for control of Nejd continued, now between Abdallah ibn Faisal ibn Turki and Abdul Rahman bin Faisal Al Saud. These people, jockeying for political position, typically portrayed themselves as the leaders of the Islamic community

Muhammed bin Abdullah conquered Nejd in 1891 and drove the Al Saud into exile. In 1901, Abdulaziz (son of Abdul Rahman bin Faisal), with a raiding party of about forty, retook Riyadh; and by 1904 the Ottomans were again involved. Abdulaziz eventually conquered parts of the peninsula, including the eastern coast, in the years before WWI

By then oil was already an industrial consideration; and at the beginning of the war, one of the first moves by the British was to protect the Persian fields: these gave the Persian Gulf strategic importance, so eliminating Ottoman influence on the Arab Peninsula also became a British objective. The British therefore designed an "Arab flag" and sent TE Lawrence to coordinate an Arab revolt against the Ottomans. The British also established relations with the Al Saud, and provided surplus munitions at the war's end, enabling Abdulaziz to consolidate his power completely by 1930, before which the British had already recognized most of his conquests by treaty. Then in 1938, when everyone expected Germany to start a new war, Standard Oil found oil in the new kingdom, guaranteeing that support for Abdulaziz would continue

Wahhabism is not a movement that naturally commends itself to large numbers of people: it was not spread by voluntary conversion; and it is closely tied to the power and prestige of the Al Saud, who have for many years used it as the public explanation of why they should rule. It would probably have remained a small extremist movement, except for the role of oil and the world wars. There is no general agreement about what constitutes "Sharia law," although the Wahhabist judges of Saudi Arabia will insist on their individual opinions: however, as appointees of the king, and serving at his pleasure, they are likely rule in ways that consolidate ruling class power, and the authority of the monarch, rather than undermining him and his family

[Act_of_Reparation]

19. Ugh. Really?

Wahhabist ideology did not mysteriously sweep across the Arab peninsula:

No one is saying it did.

its political history and success are tied closely to various geopolitical matters

No one is saying it isn't.

The 1744 power-sharing agreement, between Ibn Abd al-Wahhab and Ibn Saud, doesn't necessarily signify that Ibn Saud established Diriyah for religious reasons:

No one is saying he did.

Wahhabism is not a movement that naturally commends itself to large numbers of people:

No one is saying it is.

it was not spread by voluntary conversion;

No one is saying it was.

however, as appointees of the king, and serving at his pleasure, they are likely rule in ways that consolidate ruling class power, and the authority of the monarch, rather than undermining him and his family

No one is saying they don't.

[struggle4progress]

20. Ain't nobody sayin nuthin round here!

[Act_of_Reparation]

22. Well, it's been fun.

[Yorktown]

16. Observe closely the answer you got

**long, long text**
Wahhabism is not a movement that naturally commends itself to large numbers of people: it was not spread by voluntary conversion; and it is closely tied to the power and prestige of the Al Saud, who have for many years used it as the public explanation of why they should rule.
**long, long text**

So, Wahhabism was the indoctrination tool used by the Saudis to rule over the masses.

Other than that, religion has nothing to do with the enduring rule of the house of Saud.

Back to the **long, long text**

[struggle4progress]

17. "We want sound-bites!"

[Act_of_Reparation]

18. I'd settle for less bullshit.

[Iggo]

12. Our noble allies in the war on terror.

They also crucify people and kill women for being women.

That's our friends, kids.

[edhopper]

13. True

but it has nothing to do with religion. Nothing. Not one bit. It has to do with everything else. That these punishments are dictated and justified because of their religion has zero to do with why this happens.
Or so I've been told.

[Cartoonist]

21. Isn't it amazing?

No matter how steeped in religion the laws and punishments are, there is always some apologist who will claim it's about oil or land or something else.