From MEMRI:
A three-volume treatise by Sa’id ibn Nasser Al-Ghamdi, titled Deviation from the Faith as Reflected in [Arab] Thought and Literature on Modernity, has recently gained publicity in the Arab world. The book, published in December 2003 inSaudi Arabia, is based on Al-Ghamdi’s 2000 doctoral dissertation, submitted to the Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud Islamic University, for which he received his degree summa cum laude. In his treatise, Al-Ghamdi names more than 200 modern Arab intellectuals and authors whom he accuses of heresy – thus making it permissible to kill them…
Al-Ghamdi’s book was reviewed on the reformist website www.metransparent.com by Egyptian poet and literary critic ‘Abdallah Al-Samti, who said: “The most dangerous thing in this book is its outright call to murder, and the fact that it legitimizes the killing of Arab intellectuals, since Sa’id Al-Ghamdi claims that ‘the statements, actions, and beliefs of [these intellectuals] demand the ridda punishment [3] and legitimize their killing. However, in the current secular political climate that has been imported from the West, they have [been able to] spread the heresy and atheism that is in their decayed hearts…'”
In his dissertation, Al-Ghamdi explains that “since the arrows of doubt shot by the enemies of Islam have multiplied… and they have spread their intellectual and behavioral poisons among the Muslim youth in an attempt to drown them in deviancy, to bring them out from light into darkness, to replace their inner conviction and faith, and to cast them into the wasteland of doubts, skepticism, and vanities – [for these reasons] it is incumbent upon those who understand this to make clear to their [Islamic] nation and their community the danger inherent in this behavior…
“The most dangerous and vile thing that the enemies of Islam have done in order to achieve their deviant aims has been to use cultural means, which are outwardly manifest as literature, poetry, culture, and criticism, but which internally embody heresy, skepticism, and hypocrisy.
“The enemies of Islam have succeeded in sowing the seeds of their hatred in the land of the Muslims, and in growing the evil tree – the tree of accursed materialism. Muslims see and hear the people who openly call to heresy and to departure from the right path, and who openly spread intellectual and moral depravity, sometimes in the guise of ‘modern literature’ and sometimes under the slogan of ‘human culture’…”