Free Republic

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia A week ago yesterday I was supposed to appear at the Sahafa police station to receive 75 lashes on my back. I had been sentenced by a religious court because of articles I had written calling for freedom of speech and criticizing Wahhabism, Saudi Arabia's official religious doctrine. At the last minute, I decided not to go to the police station and undergo this most humiliating punishment. With the nation at a virtual standstill for the holiday Id al-Fitr, the sentence remains pending. I will leave this matter to fate. Even before the attacks on foreign housing...

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, May 24 — When he was a teenager issuing his own fatwas, Mansour al-Nogaidan ordered his followers to blow up a video store in downtown Riyadh because it was spreading Western corruption. Now, years later, a completely changed man has dropped a philosophical bombshell in the fervent national discussion swirling around the suicide attacks this month against residential compounds here. Mr. Nogaidan said in print that the Wahhabi doctrine prevalent in Saudi Arabia was the root cause of the violence fomented in the name of Islam here and around the world. "The main problem is that these...