Time for some solidarity.
Courtesy of my colleague, a story has come to my attention that the Egyptian secular blogger Abdul Aziz Mohamed El Baz has been in jail in Kuwait for the last two weeks on charges of blasphemy. He has been instrumental in the work of Arab Atheist TV. I’m sure that I do not need to tell anyone how serious this is.
This is not an isolated incident. Please take a look at this and this and this and this.
And here it becomes important to stress something about the nature of solidarity. As I have written before solidarity has nothing to do with being charitable, or nice, or any guff like that. You defend those that share your values because it is how you defend your own.
This stuff is already spreading from the Middle East to somewhere near you. Please take a look at this and this and this.
So, pop over to the group Free BenBaz and if you have any way to get the word out about this in whatever forum you have, please do this. Here is the twitter account.
Freedom is indivisible; the chains on any one of my people were the chains on all of them, the chains on all of my people were the chains on me […] We have not taken the final step of our journey, but the first step on a longer and even more difficult road. For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others. The true test of our devotion to freedom is just beginning. – Nelson Mandela, Long Walk To Freedom.
