http://dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/2041/The-Kashgari-Story-from-the-Right-and-the-Left.aspx
Fox News’ Bret Baier reported the Hamza Kashgari story in brief on February 20, giving it little more three tweet’s worth of space (the amount of Kashgari’s “blasphemous” material):
Baier said:
Finally, a young Saudi blogger has been sent back to his homeland to face trial and possible execution triggered by comments he made on Twitter that were seen as blasphemous against the Prophet Mohammed.
The smooth passive voice eliminates state actors and state religion.
Hamza Kashgari has apologized for sending three tweets of a fictional conversation with the prophet Mohammed that quickly sparked thousands of angry responses and even death threats.
No official reaction from the Saudi government.
Gee, did they even have anything to do with it?
U.S. human rights groups have asked the State Department to intervene.
Kind of takes it out of Fox News’ hands. What a relief! That’s Saudi Conservative Media for you.
Now, for a liberal take on the story, courtesy Richard Cohen:
Keep your eye on Hamza Kashgari. He’s the 23-year-old former columnist for Saudi Arabia’s Al-Bilad newspaper who had the extremely bad judgment to tweet an imaginary conversation he was having with the Prophet Muhammad.
“Extremely bad judgment”? Love the casual concession to totalitarian Islam. What would Cohen say about Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago? I guess that was super-extremely mega-colossal bad judgment.
In almost no time, he was running for his life, hopping a plane in Jeddah and hoping to reach New Zealand. In Malaysia, where he apparently had to change planes, he was held incommunicado until a private plane arrived from Saudi Arabia. He’s now back home, in jail and possibly facing a death sentence.
Rather more detail that Bret Baier gave Fox viewers.