Raif Badawi is the Saudi blogger who was sentenced to death, later commuted to 1000 lashes, for his blog posts, that advocated separation of religion and state, and that asked for the deadening grip of state-enforced religious orthodoxy to be lifted from his people.
A collection of some of his blog posts has been published as "1000 Lashes: Because I Say What I Think", available, for example, on amazon.com.. The book has a foreword by the physicist and cosmologoist Lawrence Krauss.
A review by Aparna Sanyal is at the Globe and Mail.
Even if the American liberal is determinedly disinterested in supporting the freedom of expression and free thinking in the Islamic world, there is one post there where Badawi rejects modern Western secularism as having lost its way. Aparna Sanyal's review, linked above, mentions it.
This Western example is heavy with the delusions of total control over the keys to wealth and the secrets of power. It is threatening the values that created the magic of the West over many decades: the values of intelligence, equality, world peace, protection of the environment, conviviality, and the many other values that will lead to the immortality of humanity. It’s starting to threaten the good lives of the citizens within the Western communities themselves. It’s threatening the unity of humanity.Badawi, Raif (2015-07-31). 1000 Lashes: Because I Say What I Think (Kindle Locations 635-638). Greystone Books. Kindle Edition.
Badawi instead seeks an new secularism based in his own culture.The book is a short read, but worth the time for the glimpses of the courageous and kind person revealed by his writings.
