In 2012, Raif Badawi was sentenced to 10 years in prison and caning for blasphemy. The Saudi blogger was finally released on Friday. His homeland has changed radically in the meantime.
Ensaf Haidar with a photo of her husband: Raif Badawi was released on Friday
“I can hardly believe it, he’s free!” said Ensaf Haidar, the wife of Saudi Arabia’s most famous prisoner, on Friday in her Canadian exile. It had just been announced that her husband, the blogger and author Raif Badawi, had been released from prison after serving his sentence. “I was jumping up and down, I was so excited,” Nawya, the activist’s 18-year-old daughter, told AFP. “I can’t wait to finally see my father again.”
For years, Ensaf Haidar fought for her husband, held vigils, accepted awards and made sure his case was not forgotten. Now she has reached her goal. But Badawi, who is in poor health, is said not yet allowed to leave the country. He has a ten-year travel ban, his lawyers announced. Haida wants to take action and ensure that her husband can come to Canada to her and their children as soon as possible.
He was publicly flogged
In his home country of Saudi Arabia, Raif Badawi was sentenced to ten years in prison and a thousand lashes in 2012 for blasphemy and insulting Islam. The then 28-year-old was anything but a radical. He neither called for subversion nor renounced religion. In his blog he had only thought aloud about God and the world, about topics such as the role of women or how to deal with people of other faiths. “For me, liberalism means live and let live,” wrote Badawi in one of his texts.
In the extremely conservative kingdom, however, that was reason enough to throw him in prison. At first, the judges even threatened him with the death penalty. Instead, in 2015, the slender intellectual was publicly flogged in front of a mosque in Yidda. Secret video recordings show the crowd shouting “Allah akbar!” calls and yells.
The Saudis suspended the beatings after the first fifty lashes because of Badawi’s poor health. But the blogger had long since become a symbol of freedom and the will not to be defeated. “I’m a thin man, but I’m tough,” Badawi dictated to his wife over the phone from prison.
Above all, however, it became a beacon for Saudi Arabia. The rich oil monarchy, whose reputation had already suffered badly after the attacks of September 11, 2001, the majority of which were carried out by Saudi citizens, was now finally considered a kingdom of darkness, where strict religious police officers and radical Islamic preachers terrorized dissenters and imposed medieval punishments.
The global wave of outrage that followed was correspondingly violent. Intellectuals, human rights activists, but also countless Western politicians repeatedly drew attention to the case – much to the annoyance of Riyadh, which wanted to forget the whole thing.
His words are still relevant
Years later, the released Badawi will hardly recognize his country anymore. The religious police who once arrested the blogger have since been removed from power, and the clergy have become tame. There are now pop concerts and cinemas in Saudi Arabia. Women are allowed to drive and sit in cafés with men. Badawi would no longer be publicly flogged today either, because caning was abolished in 2020.
It almost seems as if much of what Badawi once demanded in his texts has become reality. Nevertheless, the blogger would possibly end up behind bars again today. Admittedly, Saudi Arabia under the young Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is outwardly a more liberal country. But there is no real freedom there. All reforms are strictly imposed from above.
Activists who step forward and speak out critically are still being arrested or, in the case of journalist Jamal Kashoggi, even murdered. “As soon as a thinker begins to voice his ideas, he is accused in a hundred fatwas,” Badawi once wrote in his blog, which has since been published as a book. His words are still relevant ten years after his conviction.