{"id":7187,"date":"2012-02-11T08:23:06","date_gmt":"2012-02-11T08:23:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.faceofmalawi.com\/?p=7187"},"modified":"2012-02-11T08:23:06","modified_gmt":"2012-02-11T08:23:06","slug":"saturday-february-11th-2012-malaysia-detains-saudi-tweeter-for-insulting-islam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/2012\/02\/11\/saturday-february-11th-2012-malaysia-detains-saudi-tweeter-for-insulting-islam\/","title":{"rendered":"Malaysia detains Saudi tweeter for \u2018insulting Islam\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Malaysian authorities on Friday said they had detained a young Saudi journalist who fled his country after Twitter comments he made about the Prophet Mohammed triggered calls for his execution.
\nHamza Kashgari was taken into custody after flying into Malaysia\u2019s main international airport on Thursday, national police spokesperson Ramli Yoosuf told AFP.
\n\u201cKashgari was detained at the airport upon arrival following a request made to us by Interpol after the Saudi authorities applied for it,\u201d he said.
\nOfficials in Interpol\u2019s office in Malaysia could not immediately be reached for comment.
\nThe state news agency Bernama said 23-year-old Kashgari had been detained by Muslim-majority Malaysia \u201cfor allegedly insulting Islam and the Prophet Mohammed\u201d.
\nLast week, on the prophet\u2019s birthday, he tweeted: \u201cI have loved things about you and I have hated things about you and there is a lot I don\u2019t understand about you.
\n\u201cI will not pray for you.\u201d
\nExtradition
\nAFP could not immediately confirm where Kashgari flew in from or whether he was en route to another destination.
\nA statement released by Malaysian Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said Kashgari was detained in the airport\u2019s departure hall but gave no further details.
\n\u201cThe police are now in contact with the Saudi Arabian authorities in order to determine the next steps,\u201d the statement said.
\nMalaysia and Saudi Arabia do not have a formal extradition treaty but have close ties as fellow Muslim countries.
\nA Malaysian home ministry official who asked to remain unidentified said Kashgari could be extradited under other bilateral security agreements. Malaysia has in the past summarily deported people it considers undesirable.
\nRights organisation Amnesty International called for Kashgari\u2019s immediate and unconditional release, saying he faced possible execution if he was returned to Saudi Arabia and his comments were ruled to amount to apostasy.
\nHassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Amnesty\u2019s Middle East and North Africa deputy director, said it considered Kashgari \u201ca prisoner of conscience since he is being detained in Malaysia for peacefully exercising his right to freedom of expression\u201d.
\n\u2018Abhorrent\u2019
\nKashgari\u2019s controversial tweet sparked some 30 000 responses, according to an online service that tracks Twitter postings in the Arab world.
\nInsulting the prophet is considered blasphemous in Islam and is a crime punishable by death in Saudi Arabia.
\nFadiah Nadwa Fikri, a spokesperson for Malaysian activist group Lawyers for Liberty, said Kashgari was a blogger who had decried the \u201coppression of women\u201d.
\n\u201cThis is again a violation of freedom of expression. He has every right of making comments and so on without being persecuted,\u201d she told AFP.
\n\u201cMalaysia should give asylum to him. But instead they are conspiring with the Saudi government. It\u2019s abhorrent.\u201d
\nKashgari has apologised over the affair but that has not stemmed calls for his head.
\nA committee of top clerics branded him \u201can \u201cinfidel\u201d and demanded he be tried in an Islamic court, while a Facebook page entitled \u201cThe Saudi people demand Hamza Kashgari\u2019s execution\u201d has attracted thousands of followers.<\/p>\n

The incident has shone a spotlight on the use of freewheeling social media networks such as Twitter and Facebook in deeply conservative Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n

Top Saudi cleric Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah al-Sheikh has called Twitter \u201ca great danger not suitable for Muslims\u201d and \u201ca platform for spreading lies and making accusations\u201d.
\nBut millions of Saudis, including many government officials, have created Twitter and Facebook accounts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Malaysian authorities on Friday said they had detained a young Saudi journalist who fled his country after Twitter comments he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7190,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[81],"tags":[836,903,1556,1016],"class_list":["post-7187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national-news","tag-arrested","tag-malaysia","tag-saudi","tag-twitter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7187\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}