A Saudi Arabian court has reportedly upheld the 10-year prison sentence, along with 1,000 lashes, of a young man whose blog rubbed authorities the wrong way.

You see, there is no freedom of speech in that archaic patriarchal society, which also treats women like objects to be used by the men as they see fit.

The BBC reports that “In 2012, Raif Badawi was arrested and charged with ‘insulting Islam through electronic channels.’ For four years he had been running the Liberal Saudi Network, which encouraged online debate on religious and political issues.”

The report also says that Saudi Arabia responded to the international outcry over the absurd sentence by issuing a statement in March “saying it rejected interference in its internal affairs.”

I imagine the international outcry will pick up steam now, with bloggers and other writers condemning Saudi Arabia for the decision — because, you know, in Western countries, we have freedom of speech. We can call it as we see it: Saudi Arabia is a sick violator of human rights!

One has to wonder if Saudi Arabia is being entirely honest with the West: it claims to be fighting ISIS with the West, then behaves like ISIS in its own country — except that instead of just executing Raif like ISIS no doubt would have done, Saudi Arabian officials have decided to torture him with whippings and a jail sentence he is unlikely to survive.

In that sense, Saudi Arabia seems more perverse than ISIS . . .

— Jillian