RIYADH – Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, speaking to The Atlanticin a wide-ranging interview linklink>,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 Goldberg linklink>publishedon Monday, were Islam, personal attacks and national security.
“There is a different standard of freedom of speech. Inlink>link>Saudi Arabialink> we have just threelines—anyone can write whatever they want to write, speak about whateverthey want to speak about, but they shouldn’t reach these three 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 link>link>Saudi Arabialink> it’s okay to attack aministry or a company, but the culture of the Saudis, they don’t like toattack a person, and they like to leave the personal issue out of it. Thisis part of the Saudi culture,” Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was quotedas saying linklink>.
“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.