Hans Rustad En palestiner i 20-årene, Waleed Hasayin, oppdaget friheten på internett og utviklet tanker om religion og Gud som de andre innbyggerne i Kalkilya på Vestbredden ikke likte. Det var internettcafeeieren som ble mistenksom. «Noen» tipset politiet og siden oktober har Hasayin sittet i fengsel.
Myndighetene hevder det er til hans eget beste. Men han har heller ikke fått noen advokat.
Tilfellet illustrerer kollisjonen mellom internett og det islamiserte palestinske samfunnet. Så langt, men ikke lenger. Å titte på jenter hadde vært ok, men å skrive om Allah og Muhammed godtas ikke. Hasayin utviklet seg til ateist. Det kan man ikke fortelle offentlig. Det er en mening som ikke godtas.
But since the end of October Mr. Hasayin has been detained at the local Palestinian Authority intelligence headquarters, suspected of being the blasphemous blogger who goes by the name Waleed al-Husseini. The case has drawn attention to thorny issues like freedom of expression in the Palestinian Authority, for which insulting religion is considered illegal, and the cultural collision between a conservative society and the Internet.
While Mr. Hasayin has won some admiration and support abroad — a Facebook group has formed in solidarity, along with several online petitions — others on Facebook are calling for his execution.
In his hometown, the reaction seems to be one of uniform fury. Many here say that if he does not repent, he should spend the rest of his life in jail.
“Everyone is a Muslim here, so everyone is against what he did,” said Alaa Jarar, 20, who described himself as not particularly pious. “People are mad at him and will not respect the Palestinian Authority if he is released. Maybe he is a Mossad agent working for Israel.”
Aside from his Facebook pages, which have now been deleted, Mr. Husseini, the online persona, also posted essays in Arabic on a blog called Noor al-Aqel (Enlightenment of Reason) and in English translation on Proud Atheist, identifying himself as “an atheist from Jerusalem — Palestine.”
The essays offer some relatively sophisticated arguments in a blunt and racy style. In one, titled “Why I left Islam,” Mr. Husseini wrote that Muslims “believe anyone who leaves Islam is an agent or a spy for a Western State, namely the Jewish State.”
He added, “They actually don’t get that people are free to think and believe in whatever suits them.”
He went on to describe the Islamic God as “a primitive, Bedouin and anthropomorphic God,” and Muhammad as “a sex maniac” who bent his own rules “to appease his voracious desire.”
Palestinian human rights groups in the West Bank have so far remained silent about Mr. Hasayin’s arrest. But Majed Arouri, a human rights expert in Ramallah, said he believed that the way in which Mr. Hasayin had been detained and his correspondence recorded “contradicts human rights principles and existing Palestinian laws” regarding individual privacy.
If Mr. Hasayin is to be tried, Mr. Arouri said, it would be according to a 1960 Jordanian law against defaming religion, still valid in the West Bank.
Some bloggers are already comparing Mr. Hasayin, or Mr. Husseini, to Kareem Amer, an Egyptian blogger who was sentenced in 2007 to four years’ imprisonment for insulting Islam and the Egyptian president.
Kalkilya er en på 40.000 innbyggere, ikke langt fra grensen til Israel. Det er kjent for å være en konservativ by. Den islamistiske bevegelsen står sterkt.
