Does standing up for liberty simply mean to stand up just for those in this country? Are the rights in the Declaration of Independence only inherent to those in this country, or are they instead fundamental human rights wherever humanity exists? The rights of men to be treated equally should not be limited only to American citizens but to human beings everywhere striving to be free. Anyone serious about the movement of liberty has the responsibility to speak up for the voiceless and those who can’t speak for themselves. Rafi Badwi’s only crime was to stand up for reason in a country that holds its religion as the absolute truth.
His only crime was to be a blogger in Saudi Arabia, standing up for free-thinking and who established a web site called Free Saudi Liberals. The barbaric nature of the Saudi Arabia Regime goes beyond just the story of Rafi. It demonstrates how Saudi Arabia is anti reason and anti scientific. Rafi is an ardent defender of science and reason, and for that he is paying the price. To survive, human beings must use reason by the mind to make rational judgments. We can make a clear judgment that the planets revolve around the sun because of the mind and scientific naturalism.
Unfortunately the anti intellectualism that exits in the Saudi Arabia government does not hold what has been proven by individual human progress, but instead by the Scriptures. What is most disturbing is that this is the ideological motive among the extremes of Islam all throughout the Islamic world. Imagine an apple moving to the ground by the force of gravity. This is the explanation of these ideas from the viewpoint of reason, but the anti-reason idea is that God moved it to the ground. This idea destroys the very essence of human freedom and is a revolt against enlightenment and the age of reason.
The same men who say that man’s mind can’t be trusted to make judgments about the role of science from the reason of the mind are the ones who want to restrict liberty and freedom by controlling our minds This problem goes beyond just Islam, as when the state and church mix — no matter what religion. Because of the horrific crimes of the Roman Catholic Church during the Inquisition and Middle Ages, the intelligent individuals and the individuals who stood up for reason were punished. Galileo was punished for his individual thought based on scientific inquiry that the Sun was the center of the Solar System and not the Earth.
The Church was against individual progress and individual thought because it threatened its monopoly on power over the minds of individuals. It is the same with the fundamentalists in the Islamic world today. As a nation why should we care about Rafi Badwi ? Is Rafi just a random discontent? Why so much attention on Rafi when there are so many other political dissidents locked up ? Rafi is more than just a random political dissident, but instead is an individual who represents everything our country stands for.
Rafi represents the principles that our founding fathers fought for, which includes freedom of speech and expression and the reason of individual men. As Rafi says “Secularism respects everyone and does not offend anyone ” Secularism is the practical solution to lift countries out of Third World status, and into the First World ” The reason our political leaders should do more to get Rafi out prison in Saudi Arabia is because he represents everything this nation was founded upon, and everything our Founding Fathers stood for. What does it mean as a nation if we remain voiceless over the imprisonment of Rafi?
What it means is that as a nation we don’t have the courage of our convictions to stand up for human liberty and the ideas of reason across the globe. Rafi has something in common with all of us, which is that he has a family who cares for him. Do you truly care about freedom and liberty? If you truly are a principled classical liberal, you would stand up for the rights of individuals to think freely whoever they are and wherever they are. Rafi is more than just a statistic. Instead, he is an individual with passions and love for his family and burns with the desire to live in a free society. just like any American.
