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| Francois Hollande alongside Angela Merkel, Binyamin Netanyahu, Mahmoud Abbas, etc |
EXTRACT: Most mind-bogglingly of all, it need hardly be said, is the idea that Saudi Arabia is Charlie and could send an official to an event supposedly cherishing and defending the values of secularism - such a level of hypocrisy is off the Richter scale. Further compounding the outrage is the fact that on the Friday before the Paris rally, Saudi Arabia had publicly flogged Raif Badawi for setting up a blog, Free Saudi Liberals, deemed to be “insulting” to Islam. Originally sentenced in 2013 to seven years in prison and 600 lashes in relation to the charges, the punishment was stiffened after his lawyer made an appeal - now condemned to 1,000 lashes, a 10-year prison sentence and ordered to pay a fine of one million riyals (£175,000). Following his arrest, his wife and children left the kingdom for Canada (for good measure, his lawyer, Waleed Abu al-Khair, was sentenced to 15 years in prison last July for daring to criticise human rights abuses). Compassionately, the Saudi authorities will be flogging him in weekly 50-lash instalments.
How come leaders and officials in Paris were not demonstrating in support of Raif Badawi - Je suis Raif? The fact of the matter is the United States could bring down the entire House of Saud if it chose to do so, let alone get Badawi released. Perhaps even more to the point, just take a hard look at al Qa’eda and IS: exactly who provides the finances? Wealthy individuals in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states who have connections right to the very top of these pro-western dictatorships. Then there is the broader historical and geo-political background. Organisations like al Qa’eda and IS can draw deep from a wellspring of alienation arising from colonial and imperialist oppression, whether it be French in Algeria or the US in Iraq.
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