Raif Badawi is still due to be publicly flogged 50 times every week after Friday prayers until he has been lashed 1,000 times – simply for blogging about free speech.
P.S.:
The philosophical term ethnocentrism helps to develop a global ethic, but also to understand the limited horizon of a national legal system.
+
I’m watching absurd decisions in the law systems of Saudi Arabia, India, Russia, Turkey, Germany etc. – do you have to add some examples?
Flickr Comments 
Ethnocentrism, a sociological concept: my clan, my tribe, my nation is the center. Democracy, almost by definition, reduces the grip of ethnocentric thinking – which can be innocent enough, but derails into rascism and hatred of “the other” as we so often see.
LikeLiked by 1 person
thank you, Steven/Bumba, for your “Democracy reduces the grip of ethnocentric thinking – which … derails (slips / degenerates) into racism and hatred of the other”. You moved from the Bronx to Jerusalem, from Jerusalem to L.A. – you’ve seen many different points of views. Mostly those readers can follow me easily, who lived in different spheres of influence, so one studied in the USA but came back to India (Rita Banerji) or my French friend, who has roots in Vietnam etc. (myself was torn between East- and West-Germany, Poland and USA).
LikeLiked by 1 person
Mark Twain said (in so many words) that travel is a cure for prejudice.
LikeLiked by 1 person
And I could have writen this to conclude my last post on racism… But nowadays, even if people are travelling, they are sometimes between them in holliday villages, in restaurants from their country, in their usual behavior. It’s more than travelling, it’s to be open-minded.
LikeLiked by 1 person
True.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I was writing for a webzine an article on weapons, freespeech and “revolutions”….Maybe I will put it this week on line on icezine.wordpress.com too… But for us, in France, free speech is sometimes for bad things, as you can see in
https://icezine.wordpress.com/2015/03/15/le-blogging-du-dimanche-tableau-dune-micro-societe-francaise/
And I as saw protests in Germany during this week end, I’m thinking that things are not very different in our two countries.
LikeLiked by 1 person
you are right with “Marion Marshal Le Pen continues to kill political debate in France…” – sometimes free speech makes problems. In my hometown, Wuppertal, last weekend three groups clashed together: right-wing anti-immigration PEGIDA vs. pro-immigration “autonomous” anarcho-scene vs. Islamist & Salafists (Sharia Guards, gathering near the Jewish synagogue) – not an easy day for thousands of policemen to calm down the aggressions…
LikeLike
Besides these blatant acts of racism there are so many subtle instances that many of us do not even notice. It is a very deep and pervasive problem. Good for you for talking about it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
thanks for “…there are so many subtle instances that many of us do not even notice…”
LikeLike