RIYADH – Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, speaking to The Atlanticin a wide-ranging interviewlink>,said that anyone in the kingdom could write whatever they wanted to writeand speak about whatever they want to speak about except for three redlines.

The crown prince’s statements on the red lines came toward the end of hisinterview with The Atlantic’s Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberglink>publishedon Monday, were Islam, personal attacks and national security.

“There is a different standard of freedom of speech. In Saudi Arabia wehave just three lines—anyone can write whatever they want to write, speakabout whatever they want to speak about, but they shouldn’t reach thesethree lines.

This is not based on the interest of the government, but on the interest ofthe people. Line one is Islam. You cannot defame Islam. Line two—inAmerica, you can attack a person and his company or a minister and hisministry. In Saudi Arabia it’s okay to attack a ministry or a company, butthe culture of the Saudis, they don’t like to attack a person, and theylike to leave the personal issue out of it. This is part of the Saudiculture,” Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was quoted as sayinglink>.

“The third line is national security. We are in an area not surrounded byMexico, Canada, the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. We have ISIS, al-Qaeda andHamas and Hezbollah and the Iranian regime, and even pirates. We havepirates that hijack ships.

So anything that touches the national security, we cannot risk in SaudiArabia. We don’t want to see things that happen in Iraq happening in SaudiArabia. But other than that, people have the freedom to do whatever theywant to do. For example, we didn’t block Twitter. Or access to socialmedia. Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat. Name it, it’s open for all Saudis.

We have the highest percentage of people around the world using socialmedia. In Iran they block social media and in other countries they blocksocial media. Saudis have free access to whatever media around the world,”he said.