Hamza Kashgari is a Saudi journalist.
On the occasion of the Muslim prophet’s birthday last week, 23-year-old Mr Kashgari tweeted: “I have loved things about you and I have hated things about you and there is a lot I don’t understand about you.”
“I will not pray for you,” he added. ( Hamza Kashgari faces criminal charges over Twitter remarks )
Now he faces the death sentence in Saudi Arabia for those tweets.
Liberal MP Irwin Cotler announced this morning that he will act as Kashagri’s international legal counse. Here’s the release from Cotler’s office:
Saudi writer Hamza Kashgari – a 23-year old blogger whose tweets about the Prophet Muhammad inflamed Islamists who called for his death – has been detained in Malaysia and is facing extradition to Saudi Arabia and possible imminent execution. He was apprehended by Malaysian authorities on his way to New Zealand to request refugee status.
By the time Kashgari removed the tweets and issued a long apology – backtracking on his comments and begging for forgiveness – the danger had already expanded beyond the web.
Cotler, Liberal Justice and Human Rights critic, who has agreed to a request to serve as his international legal counsel, urged the Canadian government to use its good offices to secure protective relief for Hamza Kashgari. Said Cotler: “the issue of a Fatwa (here an execution decree) by Saudi religious authorities is tantamount to a death sentence.”
Kashgari was accused of blasphemy, and enraged Saudis were calling for him to be executed. Someone posted Kashgari’s home address in a YouTube video, and according to his friends, vigilantes came looking for him at his local mosque.
The Saudi Information Minister banned Kashgari’s local newspaper column and barred outlets across the country from publishing his work. Nasser al-Omar, an influential cleric, called for him to be tried in a Sharia court for apostasy, which is punishable by death.
Other leading clerics decried Kashgari on their own while Saudi authorities have issued a warrant for his arrest, and the kingdom’s council of senior scholars (Fatwa Council) issued a fatwa condemning him as an apostate and infidel, crimes punishable by death.