Is there any logic to King Abdullah (of Saudi Arabia) claiming all atheists are terrorists?

My answer would be the same as my answer to this other question – laws in countries run by dictators are not always logical. http://www.fluther.com/189048/what-are-your-thoughts-on-alex-aens-release-from-prison/

Who gives a crap what he thinks? Plus, probably there are a few American Christians who if they were in power would call atheists terrorists against Christianity and America as they know it. They feel like atheists are chipping away at the rights of Christians, and that God loves America, and when we don’t do as God commands He will not be good to us as he has throughout our history.

Well, I’m about to take a Benadryl, pop a Bertrand Russell audiobook on my MP3 player and go to sleep. If that terrifies King Abdullah, he can come and get me.

I guess I’d better change those vacation plans.

I think it’s probably arch-religious-conservative-authoritarian logic, and/or an exercise in power and an excuse to arrest people at will. After 2001, the USA posted some terrible human-rights-violating bullshit laws defining nonsense as terrorism, too. Meanwhile, many people feel the USA bombing things from the sky and often killing innocent people qualifies as “terrorism” too. Terrorism is most often used as a political label to justify and legitimize the use of violence.

If there is a seed of well-meaning logic to King Abdullah’s logic (or to some Christians who also think atheists are horrible), I think it has to do with the conservative value that society is strongest and most likely not to do evil, when everyone agrees on the same traditional system of ideas. Extremely divergent views which invalidate the assumptions on which your culture is based, may seem to be extremely negative or even threatening to law and order.

It might help to pick something that might be an equivalent, but I’m not sure what that would be in your case. Maybe if someone were an extreme anarchist social Darwinist who believed that laws were all nonsense, and that it was good if weak people died as soon as possible. Some people might think it was dangerous to have that person wandering around free, just because of their level of disagreement with society, even if they were not known to have acted on their beliefs. In a culture where pre-marital sex may be a stoning offense, not believing in any religion might look about as dangerous.

@Seek Thats practically a crime against humanity, The King will not be amused

Only in his country. In the free world atheists are modern and not terrorists.

Welcome to one of the USA’s closest allies and trading partners. The UK also had flags at half-mast for that repulsive so-called “king”.

Saudi Arabia and all the Arab Gulf States are shameful, despotic, oppressive, totalitarian and disgusting countries. They have some of the worst abuses of workers in the world where millions of poor Indian constuction workers are essentially kept as slaves. Some of the worst human rights abuses. Little to no civil liberties. And they’re all allies of the USA.

Oh—and if Hillary wins; expect more of the same.

Is there a logic to his criminalisation of atheism? This is the country that breeds the Wahhabi and Salafi strains of Islam. The most vicious, authoritarian, dogmatic, brutal and irrational form in existence—and it has been nurtured for decades by US acquiesence and support. It just so happens to be the sort of Islam that I.S. adheres to as it terrorises and murders anyone who deviates from their asserted orthodoxy.

If other muslims aren’t tolerated by these sub-normal animals, then atheists are on another level. It seems consistent from their perverted perspective to label atheists as terrorists. The most dogmatic and authoritarian have no tolerance for different views and competing ideas—and since 9/11 and the “War on Terror”, it has become very convenient for the most authoritarian regimes to label anyone and anything they don’t like as “terrorists”.

It makes as much sense as thinking all muslims are terrorists.

@flutherother I agree, generalizing of any group is always bad.

I think there’s pretty indisputable evidence that throughout history, wars and other heinous acts have come about because of religion.

Saudi Arabia is a festering pit of human rights abuses that we (the US) ignore because of their strategic value to us as an ally.

Well ya know, I have a suicide bomber duck.

@Coloma Haha

Maybe in Saudi some of the people against the government are atheists? That’s part of their schtick maybe? I see how in our Bible Belt some people assume atheists are bad people, because they associate atheism with criminals, not with educated scientists and doctors and lawyers, etc. It’s the bad kids on the block who never went to church.

I second @flutherother.

Of course there’s logic to the king’s position. It is the ONLY logic consistent with a state footed on religious principles, when the primary principle is that denial of God is apostasy. Apostasy is a crime against the state, plain and simple.

You keep missing the point that under Islam, there can be no distinction between the state and religion. A godless state is absolute irrefutable anathema. And it is the conflict between this position and the realities of modern existence that render any nation attempting to pull it off hopelessly marooned from modernity, and doomed to turmoil and corruption. THIS is why the Arab Spring and any other thought of social justice in the region is a waste of time. It is THE reason that rampant corruption will always be endemic in any state defining itself as Islamic, as well THE reason any such state will remain ungovernable minus crushing and absolute brute force.