1000 Lashes
Because I Say What I Think
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
"Raif Badawi's is an important voice for all of us to hear."— Salman Rushdie
Raif Badawi, a Saudi Arabian blogger, shared his thoughts on politics, religion, and liberalism online. He was sentenced to 1,000 lashes, ten years in prison, and a fine of 1 million Saudi Riyal, over a quarter of a million U.S. dollars. This politically topical polemic gathers together Badawi’s pivotal texts. He expresses his opinions on life in an autocratic-Islamic state under the Sharia and his perception of freedom of expression, human and civil rights, tolerance and the necessary separation of state and religion.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This collection of 15 of Badawi's previously published articles was compiled and edited by Constantin Schreiber with help from Badawi's wife after Saudi blogger Badawi was arrested in 2012, fined, and sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes for his writings. The quick but content-rich essays offer insight into the Saudi Arabian Islamic context on separation of church and state, religious extremism, the marriage of religious and secular ideologies, gender politics, and arguments for intellectualism, all rendered in political, social, and theological terms. Collected, they function as a larger exploration of the most fundamental discussions of personal and state freedoms in Saudi Arabia. That central thesis makes this book necessary reading for anyone who wants to better understand a state that many Western countries consider an ally. Badawi's introspections about his own views and Saudi Arabia's, on primarily moral and ideological grounds, are an earnest if not always nuanced approach to engaging the reality of a country at war with itself, body and soul. The book stands as cultural commentary both in its questioning, nuanced or otherwise, and in the circumstances of its author's imprisonment and torture.
