Hamza Kashgari, a Saudi journalist is on his way back to his home country, Saudi Arabia, after having been deported by Malaysia, enroute to a safe haven in New Zealand, to escape the wrath of the mullahs. Under stringent Saudi Arabian blasphemy laws, he is likely to be given the death penalty – a huge price to pay for voicing one’s heartfelt sentiments.
To citizens of more avant-garde and permissive societies, his tweets seem far from being provocative and offensive; they are rather harmless and even possibly cute. Coming on the heels of Valentine day, they should have been perceived as a conversation of love between the Prophet and his young impressionable devotee.
Savor his tweets, and most of us will be at loss to know what the clerics found insulting and offensive and what trespassed into the sanctity of Islam. In his first tweet he states ““I have loved the rebel in you, that you’ve always been a source of inspiration to me,” “I do not like the halos of divinity around you. I shall not pray for you.” In his second tweet he said, “I will say that I have loved aspects of you, hated others, and could not understand many more.” He concluded with his third tweet by saying, “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.”
Far from being blasphemous they should have been taken as the musings and ramblings of a young man, who was known to be a loner and a poet – surely they are not so incendiary that only the death of this young man will appease and soothe the ruffled feathers of the fundamentalists who are baying for his blood.
It should not be overlooked, that Hamza knows the Koran by heart, is a faithful believer in Islam, that he did not mean to disrespect the Prophet and that realizing the folly and hazards of his impulsive and spontaneous outpourings, he has profusely apologized for hurting feelings.