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Awad al-Qarni. Photo/Arab News
JAKARTA – Awad al-Qarni is a cleric and academic from Saudi Arabia who will face the death penalty for the various charges he made.
One of the accusations was made using the social media application Twitter to voice his opinion, but his opinion was considered to endanger public order.
Awad bin Mohammed al-Qarni is a man born in 1957 and raised in the village of Balqarn in the province of Asir, southwestern Saudi Arabia. Al-Qarni is a former professor at the Imam Muhammad ibn Saud Islamic University.
Al-Qarni is a scholar and academic who has many followers, especially members of the Arab community who don’t like western products. He spread his rhetoric through mosque sermons and after-school programs for youth in the city of Abha.
Read: Saudi Arabian Ulama Awad al-Qarni Faces Death Penalty for Tweeting on Twitter
In each of his sermons he explains that the west is terrorizing its nation using technology so it needs to be fought and crushed because it will destroy religion and its way of life.
In his 1998 book “Modernism in the balance of Islam: Islamic perspectives in the literature of modernity,” al-Qarni argues that modern literary works make mankind believe in lies that aim to destroy Islamic teachings.
Modernism has infected the nation and seeks to rebel against ethics, values and beliefs. Al-Qarni thinks that modernism is a subversive idea and must be fought.
His various works and expressions have drawn criticism from the local press, social media and by academics for his radical views and extreme interpretations of religion.
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