{"id":22204,"date":"2018-11-17T14:22:24","date_gmt":"2018-11-17T14:22:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=22204"},"modified":"2018-11-17T14:22:24","modified_gmt":"2018-11-17T14:22:24","slug":"saudi-clerics-son-everyone-is-threatened","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=22204","title":{"rendered":"Saudi cleric’s son: ‘Everyone is threatened’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Soon after Mohammed bin Salman, also known as MBS, was appointed Saudi crown prince in 2017, prominent Muslim leader Sheikh Salman al-Awdah was arrested<\/a>, allegedly for his refusal to tweet in support of the Saudi-led blockade of Qatar.<\/p>\n

In September 2018, prosecutors applied for him to be sentenced to death<\/a>.<\/p>\n

UpFront<\/em> speaks with Awdah’s son, Abdullah Alaoudh, who is based in the United States and is a Senior Fellow at Georgetown University.<\/p>\n

“The charges [against Salman al-Awdah] actually represent how the state would crack down on any different view and, on any person who disagrees,” says Alaoudh.<\/p>\n

“The same ‘rogue operation’ is going on for dissidents abroad, for those who disagree at home, for journalists, economists – public figures in general.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Asked whether he thinks Saudi would really execute one of its top Muslim scholars, Alaoudh refers to the Khashoggi murder and says “it’s a pattern. It did not start with my father; it did not start with Jamal Khashoggi<\/a>. It’s a pattern that we have seen through the past one-and-a-half years since the crown prince came to power. They did everything in their power to silence others, to crack down on dissent.”<\/p>\n

Saudi Arabia<\/a> is now seeking the death penalty for five people accused of the gruesome murder of journalist Khashoggi.<\/p>\n

“At some point I thought it’s very difficult for the state … to reach dissidents abroad,” says Alaoudh. “But now, after what happened to Jamal Khashoggi the message the state sent is that everyone is threatened, ‘ we can reach everyone everywhere’.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

Follow\u00a0UpFront<\/em>\u00a0on Twitter\u00a0@AJUpFront<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Facebook.<\/a><\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

Source:<\/span>\u00a0Al Jazeera News<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Soon after Mohammed bin Salman, also known as MBS, was appointed Saudi crown prince in 2017, prominent Muslim leader Sheikh Salman al-Awdah was arrested, allegedly for his refusal to tweet in support of the Saudi-led blockade of Qatar. In September 2018, prosecutors applied for him to be sentenced to death. UpFront speaks with Awdah’s son,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":22205,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22204\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}