Who would be a blogger?

Already, I am beginning to almost regret having started my proposed series on The Ten Words (Commandments). Part of the idea was that, for this month, I wouldn't have to think about what to publish.  Little did I know how much would be happening in the first couple of weeks of 2015!

I have already made reference to the murderous activities - in one case, that of the Muslim police officer in Paris, cold-blooded, evil, despicable, murder - of the Islamist thugs at the offices of the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine, and in the Jewish supermarket.  However, the universal, and well-deserved, repulsiveness engendered by those cowardly actions has served to overshadow another news report with an Islamic flavour.

On Friday, in the port-city of Jeddah in Saudi Arabia - that bastion of Sunni Islam - Raif Badawi, a Saudi blogger convicted of insulting Islam, was brought after Friday prayers to a public square, and flogged 50 times before hundreds of spectators.  What was his real 'crime'?  He had criticised Saudi Arabia’s powerful clerics on a liberal blog he founded - a blog that has since been shut down. He was also ordered to pay a fine of 1million riyals or about £175,000.  In fact, his original sentence was seven years in prison and 600 lashes (in July last year), but an appeals court overturned the sentence and ordered a retrial - which then earned him a more severe sentence of 1,000 lashes and ten years in prison.  The 1,000 lashes will be administered on a weekly basis, fifty at a time,  That means that he will be tortured like that for almost a year.  However, it might not be as long as that.  As he is, reportedly, denied any medical treatment in between lashings, it is unlikely that he will survive for long enough to complete his sentence.

Despite international pleas for his release, Badawi, a father of three, was brought from prison by bus to the public square and flogged, on the back, in front of a crowd that had just finished midday prayers at a nearby mosque.  I really can't imagine a Christian congregation coming out of a worship service and immediately watching a hanging!  But then, I cannot imagine British authorities arresting me for anything that I have published on this blog!

This event, I believe,together with the murder of the Muslim police officer, and the massacre of so many Muslim schoolchildren and some of their teachers, by members of the Pakistan Taliban, in the Peshawar district of Pakistan; shows that these Islamic terrorists are a threat to anyone, and everyone, who criticises them or who does not submit to their own beliefs.  I suppose that I have placed myself in the firing line of any of them who happens upon this blog, and who can find out where I live! 

Thankfully, I am soon to be moving home - mind you, we are going to France!