Six religious advocates and a Princeton University professor have joined a group of U.S. intellectuals in their offer to take 100 lashes each for a Saudi blogger who has been imprisoned and sentenced to 1,000 lashes for insulting the country's hardline clerics.
Robert P. George, a Princeton University professor and vice chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, and Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, volunteered to take the penalty on behalf of Raif Badawi in a letter to the Saudi Ambassador to the U.S., Adel bin Ahmed Al-Jubeir.
However, in return they have asked for the immediate release of Badawi, whose sentence of 10 years in prison has garnered headlines and sparked intense international outrage, UK MailOnline reported.
"Compassion, a virtue honored in Islam as well as in Christianity, Judaism, and other faiths, is defined as 'suffering with another.' We are persons of different faiths, yet we are united in a sense of obligation to condemn and resist injustice and to suffer with its victims, if need be," the letter reads. "We therefore make the following request. If your government will not remit the punishment of Raif Badawi, we respectfully ask that you permit each of us to take 100 of the lashes that would be given to him.
"We would rather share in his victimization than stand by and watch him being cruelly tortured. If your government does not see fit to stop this from happening, we are prepared to present ourselves to receive our share of Mr. Badawi's unjust punishment."
In 2012, Badawi was arrested after insulting the clerics on his blog. Although he was cleared of apostasy, which could have carried a death sentence, he was still ordered to 1,000 lashes, a fine of $266,000 and 10 years in prison, Fox News reported.
About two weeks ago, the 31-year-old blogger received the first of 20 weekly floggings, about 50 lashes. But his second flogging, scheduled for last Friday, had to be postponed after a prison doctor said his wounds had not healed and that he would not withstand another round of lashes.
"Not only does this postponement on health grounds expose the utter brutality of this punishment, it underlines its outrageous inhumanity," Said Boumedouha, Amnesty International's deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa program, said in a statement last week. "The notion that Raif Badawi must be allowed to heal so that he can suffer this cruel punishment again and again is macabre and outrageous.
"Flogging should not be carried out under any circumstances. Flogging is prohibited under international law along with other forms of corporal punishment."
Following his arrest, his wife and children left the kingdom for Canada.
Meanwhile the other signatories in the letter are Mary Ann Glendon, of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, Hannah Rosenthal, CEO of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation, Daniel Mark, an assistant professor at Villanova University, Eric Schwartz, dean of the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota and Katrina Lantos Swett, president of the Lantos Foundation for Human Rights & Justice.
