King Abdul Aziz has ordered the arrest of a Saudi columnist who ‘abused the Prophet Mohammad’ creating a public outcry. Gavriel Queenann – Israel National News King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud on Monday ordered the arrest of a Saudi columnist “for crossing red lines and denigrating religious beliefs in Allah and His Prophet,” the London-based Al Hayat daily reported. Hamza Kashgari went into hiding following public and official outrage over tweets he made that were labeled “blasphemy” and “abuse of Prophet Mohammed.” Kashgarai later recanted his tweets and begged forgiveness. “My tweets were posted during a [difficult] psychological state. I erred and I pray to God that He will forgive me for what I did.,” he wrote. “I declare my repentance and I distance myself fully from all the misleading ideas that had affected me and made me write expressions that I do not support. I bear witness that Mohammed is the messenger of God. I shall live and die firmly believing in it. “I declare my repentance and I strongly adhere to the testimonies that there is no deity but Allah and that Mohammaed is the messenger of Allah,” he wrote, Saudi news siteAl Sabq reported on Tuesday. Reports said that thousands of scholars, students and online users reacted angrily to his open “sacrilege” and filed cases against him calling for stringent legal action for heresy. “People are put on trial for offending other people, and the matter is far more critical when there is a profanation of God or His Prophet,” King Abdul Aziz reportedly said in the instructions to the interior minister to arrest Kashgari. Saudi information minister Abdul Aziz Khowja has also ordered that Kashgari, who wrote for a Saudi daily, be banned from writing for any publication. “When I read what he posted, I wept and got very angry that someone in the country of the Two Holy Mosques attack our Prophet in a manner that does not fit a Muslim address the best of men,” the minister posted on his twitter account. Saudi Arabia uses a strict interpretation of Islamic Shari’a law in its jurisprudence that applies the death penalty to cases of armed robbery, drug trafficking, rape, murder,sorcery and witchcraft, and apostasy from Islam. Blasphemy generally carries penalties of hundreds of lashes – often rising to 500 or more – which can be fatal in of itself. Observers say King Abdul Aziz’s arrest decree is a part and parcel of the ongoing war between individual freedoms and the deeply rooted religious sentiment in the ultraconservative Sunni kingdom.
