A blogger's challenge

But many people in Qalqilya seem convinced that this Facebook apostate is none other than a secretive young man who spent seven hours a day in the corner booth of a back-street hole-in-the-wall here. Until recently the man, Waleed Hasayin, led a relatively anonymous existence as an unemployed graduate in computer science who helped out a few hours a day at his father’s one-chair barber shop. Several acquaintances described him as an “ordinary guy” who prayed at the mosque Fridays.

Since the end of October, though, Hasayin – who is in his mid-20s – has been detained at the local Palestinian Authority intelligence headquarters, suspected of being the blasphemous blogger who goes by the name Waleed al-Husseini. The case has drawn attention to thorny issues like freedom of expression in the Palestinian Authority, where insulting religion is considered illegal, and the cultural collision between a conservative society and the Internet.

Admiration abroad

While Hasayin has won some admiration abroad, some on Facebook are calling for his execution. Others on the social networking website formed a group in solidarity to support him, and several online petitions are also backing him.

Many here say that if he does not apologize, he should spend the rest of his life in jail.

“Everyone is a Muslim here, so everyone is against what he did,” said Alaa Jarar, 20, who described himself as not particularly pious. “People are mad at him and will not respect the Palestinian Authority if he is released. Maybe he is a Mossad agent working for Israel.”

Aside from his Facebook pages, which have since been deleted, Husseini, the online persona, also posted essays in Arabic on a blog called Noor al-Aqel (Enlightenment of Reason) and in English translation on Proud Atheist, identifying himself as “an atheist from Jerusalem – Palestine.”

The essays offer some relatively sophisticated arguments in a blunt and racy style. In one, titled “Why I left Islam,” Husseini wrote that Muslims “believe anyone who leaves Islam is an agent or a spy for a Western State, namely the Jewish State.”

He added, “They actually don’t get that people are free to think and believe in whatever suits them.”

The arrest of Hasayin has caused a sensation since it was first reported by the independent Palestinian news agency Maan. There are also some who question whether he could have written all this material alone.

Hasayin’s father, Khaled, was reluctant to talk. Clearly upset and ashamed, he said that his son was in treatment and had been “bewitched” by a Tunisian woman he had met via Facebook.

Palestinian human rights groups in the West Bank have so far remained silent about Hasayin’s arrest. But Majed Arouri, a human rights expert in Ramallah, said he believed that the way in which Hasayin had been detained and his correspondence recorded “contradicts human rights principles and existing Palestinian laws” regarding individual privacy.

If Hasayin is to be tried, Arouri said, it would be according to a 1960 Jordanian law against defaming religion, a mandate still valid in the West Bank. Some bloggers are already comparing Hasayin, or Husseini, to Kareem Amer, an Egyptian blogger who was sentenced in 2007 to four years’ imprisonment for insulting Islam and the Egyptian president.