Anger as man sentenced to death for Facebook comment

Religious extremism is a mental illness and has no place in government.

>Saudi Arabia is among the world's most prolific executioners. According to Amnesty, at least 175 people had been executed in the kingdom this year as of 5 October, most of them foreign nationals, including at least 94 people from more than 20 countries. It has no written penal code, leaving many offences and punishments to judges' interpretation of Sharia, and broad provisions in its counter-terrorism and cybercrime laws have been used to impose long sentences for social media posts.

This should be widely publicized. No foreigner is safe.

This is of course wrong, no matter what the comment was, but it is strange that the article does not say what the comment was.

Here are my thoughts. 1. Don't commit crimes. If saying or writing a given phrase is a crime in the country you reside in, don't say it and don't write it. This poor man was apparently aware of this, given he deleted his comments a few minutes after writing it. Unfortunately, too late: in the meantime, some extremists had the time to screenshot his comment and send them to his employer.

2. Related, how did Saudi Arabia attorney establish that the comment was authentic? Nothing could be easier than doctoring a screenshot. Did they get Facebook to cooperate and confirm this comment was indeed posted by this man? The articles don't mention this.

3. I hope Sri Lanka and other countries will put pressure on Saudi Arabia to get this man a pardon.

4. It would be very easy for Facebook to implement automated censorship of comments that would cause their author to be killed, imprisoned, or fined. This is obviously censorship, but useful censorship. With Jev or similar models you could do it for a few hundreds of cents per comment, if that, and no doubt Facebook could do it for even cheaper.

When I search google, using his name, the AI generated content at the top works.. if I ask what comment he left, suddenly the AI generated content stops working.

If your "one true religion" requires the death of anyone who would question its validity, you don't have a religion. You have an abusive totalitarian mind control cult.

When you confront the "true believers" with logical counter arguments to their beliefs, it results in frustration, which then manifests itself as violence.

If you're asking the living about "life after death" you need to re-examine your data collection procedures.

Only the dead know what happens, and they are notoriously difficult to converse with.

Intolerant Saudi Arabia and its inhuman treatment of non-muslims. Why the world puts up with it is beyond me.

The problem was a trivial one; there was a dog in a non-muslim religious procession which was wantonly kicked by a muslim man. As any normal empathetic human would, this person wrote a facebook post condemning it in somewhat strong terms which may have had some religious flavour which he later deleted and apologized for.

The above is what is being tried under blasphemous laws by the Saudis. Where is the outrage from the international media, human rights organizations and the larger world?

We are living in the 21st century, for goodness' sake!

what a shame. i wonder what religion still has laws that issue the death penalty if you insult the religion or a prominent member of the religion

Sharia law comes together with Islam.

Once there's enough Islam, Sharia law gets adopted.

As someone who lives in a majority Muslim country, I would say that yeah it’s so fucked up this really made me sad. If you’re an atheist you really can’t critic anyone. They don’t accept logic. They just want to cut your head off and that exists amongst the most peaceful Muslims you have ever seen in your life? Trust me they are not going to tolerate any criticism or any freedom of speech. They only want to cut your head off. And they always reply with some nonsense about freedom. They don’t even understand what freedom is especially freedom of speech.

Five years in prison for a Facebook comment was already outrageous. Escalating that to a death sentence is beyond comprehension. No one's life should depend on whether the government approves of their religious opinions