The crime of this young man was an opinion article entitled “religion, religiosity, and lemaalmin” in which the author discusses two different concepts within the religious field as a form of protest for the discrimination suffered by a social category called “lemaalmin”. “Lemaalmin” is term coined to refer to the category encompassing the blacksmiths of the desert. He relied in his criticism of this discriminatory behavior on texts from the Islamic legacy and on a special reference by Dr. Abdel Majid Al-Najjar on how to distinguish between two concepts in the Islamic field, namely “religion” as a divine jurisprudence and “religiosity” as a human acquirement.
The story of Mohamed Sheikh was published in major local and international newspapers in different languages. Solidarity petitions for his case were signed and support pages on social networks were created before time scrapped his case and threw it into oblivion.
Internal and international complementing
The court of Nouadhibou decided on the execution of Ould Mkhitir at the end of December 2014. Soon after, Ould Mkhitir decided to appeal. Abbes Ould Ibraham, a Mauritanian author living in the USA and specializing in MENA studies said: “Appealing is delayed for many reasons and it seems that it is related to the authorities’ desire to not resolve the issue. On one hand, the authorities are afraid of the international community if they executed him and on the other hand, they are afraid of the strong fundamentalist street that wants to execute him.” This fundamentalist street, as described by the researcher, had succeed in intimidating Ould Mkhitir’s lawyer who resigned and therefore, Ould Mkhitir remains without a lawyer. The authorities that prefer staying silent about this case notified some western embassies that they are imprisoning him just because they fear for his life from the mob.
This courtesy swinging from the inside and the outside emerged after Kacem Ghazeli, Moroccan human rights activist and an observer with the UN protested the laws of Islamic apostasy defending Mohamed Sheikh and the Saudi author Raef Bedoui on the occasion of the human rights board meeting in March 2014. The Mauritanian ambassador in the UN board responded to this protest and said: “The Mauritanian citizen Mohamed Sheikh Ould Mkhtir has been arrested for his own protection.” The comment made by the Mauritanian ambassador was inconsistent with what the Mauritanian news agencies had reported about the conviction of Ould Mkhitir and sentencing him to death after being accused of apostasy following the article he wrote on his Facebook page, which was republished on other websites.
What is new according to the researcher Abbes Ould Abraham is “the emergence of an increasing number of Mauritanians living abroad who were sympathizing with the case. One of them is living in the USA; his name is Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz and he raised controversy and resentment when he published a blog post that circulated in the Mauritanian street and media in solidarity with Ould Mkhitir and was quickly disowned by his family.” The second person in solidarity with Ould Mkhitir lives in France called Al-Aid Ould Mohamed was former propagandist with the “propaganda and reporting” movement before he turned against its doctrines. He also published a post on Facebook to show solidarity for Ould Mkhitir’s case.
A punishment proportionate to the importance of the tribe
The more a tribe is important the more harmless will the punishment inflicted upon their people is and the more the tribe or the social affiliation is marginal, by Mauritanian customs, the more harmful the punishment is for this category and the more these people suffer in the name of law. This is shown through tolerance towards Ould Abdel Aziz’s comments said Ould Abraham and this actually shows the factional dimension in the case of the young man sentenced to death. The researcher said that Ould Mkhitir comes from “lemaalmin” category that has artisanship origins in a traditional society that suffers from injustice, scorn and marginalization.” Many activists stated that sentencing Ould Mkhitir to death comes within the framework of disempowering his category.” The researcher then added: “However, the atheism of Ould Abdel Aziz who comes from a socially influential category was ignored by the courts and public opinion including the “Prophet’s beloved companions” movement and the youth of the Islamic “Tawasol” party who led Quran-inspired campaigns to whack “atheism”.
The Mauritanian human rights activist Mr. Ahmed Al-Tafil who lives in New York said that “this issue is all about Ould Mkhitir being a scapegoat that allows the system to gain the allegiance of the fundamentalist movements and mobs of the Mauritanian public that drifts behind every religious wave caressing their delicate feelings.” In addition, and still according to the activist, Ould Mkhitir has no one to defend him in this country smothered by tribal ties and clan alliances. Al-Tafil added: “Many before this young man did what is known as mocking the religion and insultingthe sanctities and none of them was harmed just because they belonged to the sovereign classes in the country.” He concluded by saying that Ould Mkhitir is the victim of the absence of justice in Mauritania.
Despite all of that, some activists expressed on their pages that they reject his death sentence. Two parliamentary deputies (one of them is a former deputy) also expressed their rejection of the death sentence pronounced by the Nouadhibou judge; one of them is the former ambassador Mohamed Al-Mokhtar Ould Al-Zamel and the other is Al-Mostafa Ould Ibid Al-Rahman. On the political level, some parties refused to comment while others welcomed to do so. The leader of the Islamic party Jamil Mansour considered that Ould Mkhitir is a criminal who deserves the sentence even though he later condemned the “Charlie Hebdo” incident. Ahmed Ould Dadah, the leader of Ettakattol party, which is a socialist democratic party and a member of Socialist International, said that he usually does not comment on rulings with a hope that the court made a decision according to “the holy Quran and Sunnah”.
Therefore, Mohamed Sheikh remains a prisoner in his cell in the desert of Mauritania awaiting for the appeal to commence and for the authorities to set the scale of power, a scale that might tip towards complementing the internal conservative current or towards polishing their image internationally through a pardon or commutation of the sentence. However, what is certain is that Ould Mkhitir’s struggle against racial discrimination, through his article, was a shortcut that paved the way towards an inhuman punishment called the death penalty.
