Saudi Arabia

A group of Saudi clerics has come out in support of a colleague who issued a fatwa saying two writers deserve to die if they did not retract views that he said made them apostates. Sheikh Abdul-Rahman al-Barrak, one of the kingdom’s most revered clerics, said in a rare fatwa last week the columnists should be tried for apostasy for “heretical articles” published in al-Riyadh newspaper and put to death if they do not repent. They questioned the Sunni Muslim view in Saudi Arabia that adherents of other faiths should be considered unbelievers. (Reuters)