Saudi Arabia may execute a Muslim for his tweets

All this happened mid-February, but I had not been able to post about it.
Saudi Writer Hamza Kashgari Detained in Malaysia Over Muhammad Tweets
After his arrest in Malaysia he was deported to Saudi Arabia.
The bloodlust faced by the 'blaspheming' Saudi journalist
The take away quote:

One has to wonder whether a man who weeps at comments on the internet has the toughness required to survive in democratic politics, but of course Saudi is not a democracy. It is a despotism, made worse by streaks of populism.

The most horrible thing that dictatorships teach us about human nature is that their worst crimes are often the most popular parts of their programmes.

Deuteronomy 13

13:6 Suppose your own full brother, your son, your daughter, your beloved wife, or your closest friend should seduce you secretly and encourage you to go and serve other gods that neither you nor your ancestors have previously known, 13:7 the gods of the surrounding people (whether near you or far from you, from one end of the earth to the other). 13:8 You must not give in to him or even listen to him; do not feel sympathy for him or spare him or cover up for him. 13:9 Instead, you must kill him without fail! Your own hand must be the first to strike him, and then the hands of the whole community. 13:10 You must stone him to death because he tried to entice you away from the Lord your God, who delivered you from the land of Egypt, that place of slavery. 13:11 Thus all Israel will hear and be afraid; no longer will they continue to do evil like this among you.

Punishment of Community Idolatry

13:12 Suppose you should hear in one of your cities, which the Lord your God is giving you as a place to live, that 13:13 some evil people have departed from among you to entice the inhabitants of their cities, saying, “Let’s go and serve other gods” (whom you have not known before). 13:14 You must investigate thoroughly and inquire carefully. If it is indeed true that such a disgraceful thing is being done among you, 13:15 you must by all means slaughter the inhabitants of that city with the sword; annihilate with the sword everyone in it, as well as the livestock. 13:16 You must gather all of its plunder into the middle of the plaza and burn the city and all its plunder as a whole burnt offering to the Lord your God. It will be an abandoned ruin forever – it must never be rebuilt again. 13:17 You must not take for yourself anything that has been placed under judgment. Then the Lord will relent from his intense anger, show you compassion, have mercy on you, and multiply you as he promised your ancestors. 13:18 Thus you must obey the Lord your God, keeping all his commandments that I am giving you today and doing what is right before him.

Funny take on 72 virgins

Obviously, I do not read Arabic so I cannot speculate on the validity of her exegesis.  Still, this is funny from Muslim who converted to Atheism.

Misconception #5: They’re actually white raisins, not virgins.

This one is has been widely popularized by the less-harsh critics of Islam, notably Irshad Manji. While I respect the work that she does from the inside (reforming Islam is a tough goal), the scholarship that suggests that “virgins” is a mistranslation of “raisins” is shaky at best. Beyond the well-recognizedlinguistic issues with the raisins idea, there is plenty in both the Quran and Hadith to point to the reward in heaven being women, not dried fruit.

Misconception #4: Having to teach all of those virgins would be tedious.

The virgins in Jannah are supposed to be everything that men desire. Furthermore, the ancient Arabs’ conception of the highest in sexual pleasure is penile-vaginal intercourse with a woman who has never had sex, so the idea was the utmost in sexual pleasure, not tedium.

Misconception #3: They wouldn’t be virgins for very long.

The houris’ virginity is described as eternally renewable, similar to that of Aphrodite in ancient mythology.

Misconception #2: Seventy-two is an arbitrary number.

Seventy-two, in classical Arabic, is a number used for exaggeration. It is similar to saying “If I told you once, I told you a thousand times” in English. No one literally means a thousand times; what is intended is countless times. Taking into account the Arab conception of virgins, seventy-two virgins, then, means more sexual pleasure than could be imagined.

Misconception #1: The virgins are from Earth.

This is, by and large, the most common misconception. Random people on the Internet did it. Family Guy did it. Even The New Yorker did it.The joke is, of course, that the “virgins” are not nubile women, but the types of people on Earth who tend to, at least stereotypically, stay virgins their whole lives, such as World of Warcraft players (that assumption is a fallacy itself, of course). Where the joke falls flat for those in the know, like me (and, soon, you), is that the houris are not human beings from Earth who died without having had sex, but are supposed to be heavenly maidens especially created to sate the lusts of men as understood by Muhammad...

...Oh, and why did the concept of houris make me doubt my faith? Not only did the idea of heavenly sex-bots awaiting my future Muslim husband trigger my insecurities, I was pissed off that I, as a woman, would not get my own sex-bots. [1]