A Saudi Arabian court has ordered the execution of Palestinian poet Ashraf Fayadh for apostasy and abandoning his Muslim faith, according to trial documents. His conviction was based on the content of his 2008 collection of poems, Instruction Within, as well as a witness who claimed to have heard him cursing God, the Prophet Mohammed, and Saudi Arabia.
Fayadh, a key member of the British-Saudi art organization Edge of Arabia, has curated art shows in Jeddah and at the Venice Biennale. “He was instrumental to introducing Saudi contemporary art to Britain and connecting Tate Modern to the emerging scene,” Edge of Arabia co-founder Stephen Stapleton said in an interview with the Guardian.
“They accused me [of] atheism and spreading some destructive thoughts into society,” Fayadh said, explaining that his poems were “just about me being [a] Palestinian refugee… about cultural and philosophical issues. But the religious extremists explained it as destructive ideas against God.”
Previously detained in 2013 and rearrested in early 2014, Fayadh received a court sentence of four years in prison and 800 lashes. Fayadh’s ID was confiscated by police prior to his 2014 trial and the poet’s friends have stated that when police failed to find atheistic messages in his poetry they instead turned to the length of Fayadh’s hair, his smoking of cigarettes, and photographs taken with female artists as proof of his abandonment of Islam.
Fayadh attempted to appeal without a lawyer, which he could not obtain due to his lack of ID. He was retried, and a new panel of judges ruled that his repentance did not prevent the death sentence. This stems from the power granted to Saudi judges to legally enforce their own personal interpretations of Sharia law, leading to vastly different punishments for the same charges.
The judge ordered the complete dismissal of the testimonies offered in Fayadh’s defense, instead relying entirely on the witnesses of one unnamed civilian and two members of Saudi Arabia’s Mutaween religious police force.
Many of Fayadh’s supporters suspect that the true motivation behind his arrest was his posting of a video online showing a public lashing by the Mutaween.
“I was really shocked but it was expected, though I didn’t do anything that deserves death,” Fayadh said in response to his execution sentence.
The case is one of many emerging from Abha where a small but growing number of artists are challenging the boundaries of freedom of speech in Saudi Arabia. In the theocratic kingdom, cinema is banned and there are no art schools.
Saudi Arabia’s justice system is based on Sharia law, and the judges are clerics from the ultra-conservative Wahhabi school of Sunni Islam. The Wahhabi interpretation of Sharia law states that religious crimes such as blasphemy and apostasy are punishable by death.
The last such execution for apostasy came in 1992, when Sadeq Abdul Kareem Malallah was publicly beheaded for allegedly calling Mohammed a liar and smuggling a Bible into the country.
Judges have extensive scope to interpret Sharia law regardless of previous cases. After a case has been heard by lower courts, appeals courts and the Supreme Court, a convicted defendant can be pardoned by King Salman.
Take Action to Stop the Execution and Demand the Release of Ashraf Fayedh by sending a letter to Saudi Arabia’s US Ambassador here.