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#SueMeSaudi: Twitter Challenges Riyadh to Put Money Where Mouth Is

© AFP 2023 / Paul J. RchardsProtesters step on a photo of Saudi King Salman on September 4, 2015.
Protesters step on a photo of Saudi King Salman on September 4, 2015. - Sputnik International
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Twitter users are taunting Saudi Arabia with the hashtag #SueMeSaudi after the government announced that it will sue the person who compared the kingdom to Daesh, also known as ISIS/The Islamic State.

Saudi Arabia in November sentenced Palestinian poet Ashraf Fayadh to death for "spreading atheism and disrespecting the prophet." An unnamed Twitter user said the sentence was "ISIS-like."

A government official was quoted by the government-aligned Al Riyadh newspaper as saying "The justice ministry will sue the person who described … the sentencing of a man to death for apostasy as being 'ISIS-like,'" Reuters reports.

Twitter users defiantly responded with the hashtags #SueMeSaudi and #SaudiArabiaIsISIS.

One user retweeted a graphic created by the online news portal MiddleEastEye.net that compares the crime-and-punishment policies of Saudi Arabia with those of Daesh.

Others are sharing a political cartoon by Peter Brookes which shows the similarities in capital punishment carried out by Daesh and Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia's justice system is based on Islamic Sharia law, and its judges are clerics from the kingdom's ultra-conservative Wahhabi school of Sunni Islam. 

Fayadh's conviction could result in his beheading. Saudi Arabia has executed more than 150 people in 2015, the most in decades. 

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