WALID Husayin, the 26-year-old son of a Muslim scholar in the small West Bank town of Qalqiliya, is behind bars after being exposed as an atheist blogger.
Husayin, described here as a “shy barber” who prayed with his family each Friday, created uproar in the Muslim world by secretly posting anti-religion rants on the Internet during his free time.
Internet cafes in Muslim countries - such as this one in Egypt - are increasingly being 'mined' by the authorities to trap dissenters
Now he faces a potential life prison sentence on heresy charges for “insulting the divine essence” – and many in his town say he should be killed for renouncing Islam. Even family members say he should remain behind bars for life.
Said Abdul-Latif Dahoud, a 35-year-old Qalqiliya resident:
He should be burned to death.
He added that the execution should take place in public “to be an example to others”.
Over several years, Husayin is suspected of posting arguments in favour of atheism on English and Arabic blogs, where he described the God of Islam as having the attributes of a “primitive Bedouin.” He called Islam:
A blind faith that grows and takes over people’s minds where there is irrationality and ignorance.
If that wasn’t enough, he is also suspected of creating three Facebook groups in which he sarcastically declared himself God and ordered his followers, among other things, to smoke marijuana in verses that spoof the Koran. At its peak, Husayin’s Arabic-language blog had more than 70,000 visitors, overwhelmingly from Arab countries.
His Facebook groups elicited hundreds of angry comments, detailed death threats and the formation of more than a dozen Facebook groups against him, including once called “Fight the blasphemer who said ‘I am God.’”
After his mother discovered articles on atheism on his computer, she cancelled his Internet connection in hopes that he would change his mind.
Instead, he began going to an Internet cafe — a move that turned out to be a costly mistake. The owner, Ahmed Abu-Asal, said the blogger aroused suspicion by spending up to seven hours a day in a corner booth. After several months, a cafe worker supplied captured snapshots of his Facebook pages to Palestinian intelligence officials.
Officials monitored him for several weeks and then arrested him on October 31 as he sat in the cafe, said Abu-Asal.
The case is the second high-profile arrest connected in the West Bank connected to Facebook activity. In late September, a reporter for a news station sympathetic to Hamas was arrested and detained for more than a month after he was tagged in a Facebook image that insulted the Palestinian president.
Gaza’s Hamas rulers also stalk Facebook pages of suspected dissenters, said Palestinian rights activist Mustafa Ibrahim. He said Internet cafe owners are forced to monitor customers’ online activity, and alert intelligence officials if they see anything critical of the militant group or that violates Hamas’ stern interpretation of Islam.
In September, a young Gaza man was detained after publishing an article critical of Hamas on his Facebook feed.
Such “stalking” on Facebook and other social media sites has become increasingly common in the Arab world. In Lebanon, four people were arrested over the summer and accused of slandering President Michel Suleiman on Facebook. All have been released on bail.
In neighboring Syria, Facebook is blocked altogether. And in Egypt, a blogger was charged with atheism in 2007 after intelligence officials monitored his posts.
Hat tip: Jean-François Gauthier
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
November 13th, 2010 at 8:46 am
For whatever good it might do, or influence it might have, there’s a petition at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/free-waleed/
November 13th, 2010 at 9:01 am
Internet was supposed to make us free to communicate and it provided, to some extent, a window to the rest of the world for the silent dissidents in the less democratic parts of the world, if only to allow access to like-minded people, which might be a soulace if you’re living in a society that stifles, and punishes, any individual thought. And no way we can really help someone like Walid Husayin, who managed to figure out the hoax of religion in a society that loves ‘god’ more than it does people.
The least we can do, is sign the petition and keep our fingers crossed for him.
November 13th, 2010 at 9:05 am
BBC World Service
Should there still be such thing as blasphemy?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/wor.....h_thi.html
November 13th, 2010 at 9:28 am
@Daz Just signed, then noticed that the sponsor is CAIR2, I do hope that it it has no connection with either the American or Canadian terrorist organizations.
Basically whatever punishment he receives it was caused by his mother. Thanks Mum.
November 13th, 2010 at 9:52 am
If these authorities had any real beliefs in the strengths of their arguments they wouldn’t have to arrest and silence their opposition, they could provide their arguments and talk the rest of us around. The fact that they don’t/can’t is further proof that they have no real arguments.
I wouldn’t want to go to egypt either, I’d have to be charged with atheism as well (as if that could be a criminal offence ffs).
November 13th, 2010 at 9:54 am
Appropriately, there is a Facebook group for Walid Husayin
http://www.facebook.com/pages/.....038;v=wall
November 13th, 2010 at 10:39 am
Thank you, Daz, for the link to the Waleed petition. It is encouraging to see so many signatures there from Arab countries with many people giving their names.
@Graham Martin-Royle: I visit Egypt frequently and have many friends there. Most of them know that I am an atheist and do not try to convert me. One of my friends, a woman, declares herself to be an atheist and openly drinks beer in restaurants, something I would not do. But then I don’t like beer.
November 13th, 2010 at 11:26 am
Please enlighten me. They want to kill Husayin because he does not believe in their loving god? Do they say this with a straight face?
If the muslim countries want the internet and to have the technology of the 21st centrury, then they have to get out of the stone age with their beliefs. If he gets free I hope he goes around to the cafe and kicks the proverbial shit out of the coward that dropped him in it.
November 13th, 2010 at 11:39 am
WWW is causing as much havoc as Gutenberg. Good. I am sad that there will be many more brave men and women who will have to pay for it.
November 13th, 2010 at 1:57 pm
There is a positive, if somewhat bleak at present, aspect to this. These demented Allah worshippers have so little confidence in their god and in their own ability to defend themselves with facts, evidence, reason that their only recourse is to threaten, torture and kill those who disagree.
This says nothing admirable about their god or themselves and indicates the power of atheism whose rational approach terrifies them. Very like our own dear Aunty BBC with its suffocating avalanche of religion, including the dire Thought for the Day, where atheism must be censored with Stalinist severity. Hell, let some atheists appear on Thought for the Day and the consequences would be really scary: that particular audience which hasn’t switched off as many do, might be stimulated to think about the superstition being daily unloaded on to them. And they don’t want them to think, analyse and criticise. Leave them in a kind of mental somnambulism where they vaguely imagine in a shallow way that these beliefs are normal.
November 13th, 2010 at 3:53 pm
It’s obvious that across the middle east there is a whole young generation of people who are sick to the back teeth of religion and theocracy, Iran is an example of this, I just hope the tables turn soon before it’s too late, it’s disgusting that in this day and age people can be prossecuted for blasphemy let alone be jailled or executed for it.
November 13th, 2010 at 6:22 pm
Why is it that religious people see no contradiction in making free use of the fruits of rationalism – science and technology – whilst being ready to kill anyone who threatens their irrational beliefs?
Don’t they look in the mirror and feel like horrendous hypocrites? How can a person train in medicine, engineering, biochemistry, psychology or any number of disciplines and sustain their religious faith? I recently saw a GP who was wearing Islamic dress and wondered how he squares this circle. Spending his working hours in an empirical and evidence based arena and then going home to squeeze in some magic and superstition. Nice chap but a stranger to himself.
I find there something cowardly or selfish in this sort of posturing – a ‘best of both’ mentality. I’ll take the good bits of rationalism but… those difficult implications? No thanks, just keep spoon feeding me pap. Until I get cancer, when I will take full advantage of modern science, not trust in prayer.
Why don’t people who hate everything about the western world also renounce electricty, television, the internet, modern medicine, petrol engines, etc, etc.? Let them fight their jihads without using anything incompatible with what they espouse. No emailing and no mobile phones triggering bombs on jet planes. No flying jet planes into buildings. It would be a bit harder with swords and slingshots wouldn’t it? And where would Wahhabism be without tax dollars? We’ll find out in a few decades when the oil runs out and they become proud owners of the worlds biggest sandpit once again. Good luck with that.
November 13th, 2010 at 11:09 pm
Imagine one day reading a news report where the RDF calls for the beheading of some kid, who thinks that The God Delusion is a piece of rubbish and blogged this.
November 14th, 2010 at 11:00 am
And now the head of the British Army or somesuch has decided that Al Quaeda can’t be defeated as if he had arrived at some great insight. Where do they get these men? Former public schools and plenty of privilege and as much idea of real life as that daring fighter Harry Windsor who legged it from the front line quick enough. Of course they can’t defeat them. The Al Quaeda memes infest the brains of the poor and already brainwashed like worms infesting rotting meat. However, he thinks that it can be “contained.” What with? More bombers flattening villages. If a fraction of this money was spent trying to introduce rational thinking, stopping these crazy faith schools in the UK and putting an end to massive so called aid packages much of which has no chance of getting to those who need it we might get somewhere.
A most productive first step would be to put Tony Blair before a court instead of leaving him with a $50,000 dollar fee for lecturing to a USA toilet roll company. Meanwhile dopey George Bush, in his ghost written memoires, seems to think simulated drowning is not torture.
November 15th, 2010 at 7:52 am
… and the difference between that country and Austria (Europe) is?
November 15th, 2010 at 2:47 pm
they say that we can’t help people through stem cell research because they say it is “playing god”. so why the hell are they punishing this man for blasphemy? Isn’t that their god’s job?
a load of hypocrites the lot of them!