 The car of a Hail-based journalist was vandalized yesterday by miscreants who were allegedly angered by his Internet postings. Rabah Al-Quwayi, a reporter for the Arabic daily Okaz, was about to go to work in the morning when he saw that the window of his car had been broken and a note had been left behind. The note said: âIn the name of God, the Most Gracious and the Most Merciful: This time it is your car but next time it is you. Return to your religion and forsake heresy. This is the last warning.â
| Sounds remarkably like a death threat to me... |
âIâve been receiving threatening SMS messages and verbal attacks for a year now,â Al-Quwayi told Arab News over the phone from Hail. âBut this is the first time things have turned physical. I tried to track the numbers through the Saudi Telecom Company (STC) but it always turns out that the numbers are registered to expatriates.â The reporter was not attacked for anything he had written in Okaz, but rather for his participation in several Internet forums. Al-Quwayiâs liberal points of view upset a number of participants in the forums.
The attack on his car took place the day after Al-Quwayi, also a supervisor at one of the prominent Saudi cultural Internet forums, posted an article on the site. His article commented on the case of Muhammad Al-Harbi, a chemistry teacher who was charged and convicted of mocking religion. âI wrote that the only logical explanation for Al-Harbiâs case is that he is against terrorism and some religious people seem to support terrorism and so Al-Harbi, by disagreeing with them, is against religion. It is confusing,â Al-Quwayi explained.
| Al-Harbi was also convicted by a Soddy court, which would make me think it also supports terrorism. So there goes my windshield. |
Another threat was made on Al-Quwayiâs life last month. The threat was made on the well-known fundamentalist website, Al-Sahat. âThey took a sentence that I had written earlier out of context. In a long article I wrote in a discussion of the Holy Qurâan and posted on the Internet, I said that ânothing should be taken for granted.â The fundamentalists then concluded that I did not believe in the Holy Qurâan and so I should be killed.â
| That's their usual response when people don't agree with them in every respect, isn't it? |
When he saw the damage to his car, Al-Quwayi immediately called the police. He said that they arrived quickly and showed great concern. âThey examined the car, took fingerprints and even a DNA expert was there to check,â he said. The police explained to Al-Quwayi that the bad handwriting in the note and the spelling mistakes were done on purpose to confuse and disguise. |
