Oil & Apostates

Oil & Apostates

Gianluca Nigro, Senior Staff Writer

Just last week, a Saudi Arabian man was sentenced to death for renouncing his Muslim faith. The man was seen in a video tearing up a copy of the Koran, and then beating it with a shoe. But I ask, where is the freedom? Where is the adjustment to the 21st century?

Sure, anyone can make a simple Internet search to return results of missing civil liberties for women in that nation, and many of us heard about a journalist who was sentenced to a series of floggings a few months ago for bad press against the country. We know Saudi Arabia is radical, we know they cut the hands off of men and women who commit petty crimes such as robbery. But how did a country that adapted so well to the concept of planes, cars, boats, ships, electricity, phones, TVs and everything else which has moved us out of the barbarian stone ages, and into the modern world, not adapt to the idea that governments are supposed to act civilly in allowing freedom?

If you’re looking for an answer to that question, apologetically, so am I. This story upset me so much because it shows how removed the State of Saudi Arabia is from the modern world. This man posted a video to the Internet. Think about it, think about how advanced this world is, we’re talking about videos and the Internet, two revolutions in technology which have changed the world, which have proved that the future is now. Saudi Arabia should have made a claim to the modern world back in the 1930’s when petroleum was discovered, and despite the fact that they’re able to fuel the modern world with their oil production, they unfortunately are not able to fuel modernization of civil liberties in their own country.

The sooner Saudi Arabia begins to understand that we’re in a world of bionic arms, flying cars, and cured paralysis; a world of women’s suffrage, gay marriage, and freedom of religion, is the sooner they adapt to basic civil liberties. Once Saudi Arabia realizes that the future is now, that we have progressed away from public execution and death to apostates, is the sooner I feel good about use their oil in my car.