A Death Sentence for a Love Poem?
When freedom of speech bites
In early 2012 I was in a bit of trouble with the FA and the Attorney General for comments I made about John Terry. There was a lot of press about the possibility of me getting sent down for contempt of court. At the time I tweeted that I was willing to go to jail for a month in the name of free speech. If I remember correctly, I also dared them to make a martyr of me. I’ve also got warnings in the past from the FA for giving my opinion on the possible results of upcoming matches.
All silly little infringements of my freedom of expression and my right to free speech, but those episodes got me thinking about those people whose public expression of their beliefs and opinions have really landed them in hot water. One of them was a Saudi poet called Hamza Kashgari who was facing extradition from Malaysia to Saudi Arabia for writing a ‘blasphemous’ poem and posting it Twitter.
I’m not a religious person, though it’s a thoughtful poem, talking about his relationship with Mohammed as a man rather than a prophet sent by God…
On your birthday, I shall not bow to you. I shall not kiss your hand. Rather, I shall shake it as equals do, and smile at you as you smile at me. I shall speak to you as a friend, no more.
On your birthday, I find you wherever I turn. I will say that I have loved aspects of you, hated others, and could not understand many more.
On your birthday, I will say that I have loved the rebel in you, that you’ve always been a source of inspiration to me, and that I do not like the halos of divinity around you. I shall not pray for you.
Unfortunately he’s already been deported to Saudi, and he’s in custody awaiting trial. Amnesty are still monitoring the situation and hopefully the international pressure and media spotlight that’s been created will make the Saudi authorities think twice about what sentence they hand down.
Surely there’s no way a man can lose his life for writing a love poem to the Prophet?
Comments
We're still in servitude i'm sorry to say, most of us are corporate and economic slaves...slave to the wage you know?
Voting is pretty pointless as regardless of who you vote for the same people at the top always stay in power.
We have the illusion that we live in a democracy, we don't, it's a dictatorship disguised as democracy, and when you say freedom of choice, well it's true we do have freedom of choice, the freedom to chose which puppet to vote for that has been put in place by 'the man
'Look at 'the man' as a collective of uber rich individuals, bankers, kings, religions and corrupt organisations who collude with one another as to how the world ticks over
There's 2 worlds out there, 1 is the real world, the birds, the animals, the mountains, the sea, the moon, etc. and the other world is the business world
The problem we have as a society is that the business world is trying to dictate to the real world about how the world should be ran
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LikeIt's about cultures though. In Malaysia, it would appear it is not suitable to write a poem of that nature. In life, we have to accept what we often do not like. In no way am I in favour of Luis Suarez and I don't believe his excuse, but you could say that the term he used is acceptable in his culture, but it is offensive to those here. This poem may have been acceptable in the poet's culture, but the Malaysians didn't agree with it, and made the decision to deport him. I do agree that nobody should die for something so petty, but that doesn't mean people should push boundaries. I'm not familiar with Malaysian culture, so I wouldn't know if this poem was clearly going to receive this reaction. That would be the real decider between whether the man was unfortunate (that he was the first to be made an example of) or that he was foolish (and did something that he knew would see him punished).
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LikeBonjourMonAmiNE It's a fair point you make about Suarez, but people really should push boundaries. If they hadn't always done so most of us in the UK would still be living in servitude, bowing and scraping to the upper classes even more than we do now, with no right to vote. There would have been no trade unions, no universal suffrage or education.
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