From the standpoint of either a civil libertarian or a believer in international human rights, this prosecution and sentence by the Mubarak regime is a no brainer. Of course, prosecution of speech crime in this day and age is an outrage.

Even in the current state of the US Bill of Rights, Kareem's blogging is classic First Amendment freedom of expression, especially if you happen to disagree (and perhaps disagree very, very strongly) with the substance of his criticisms of Islam and apparently also Coptic Christianity. It does not matter whether Kareem is devout to a particular theology, an agnostic, or a secular non-believer. Any time any government anywhere criminalizes public discussion (even heated, offensive discussion) of religious thought or actions undertaken in the name of religious faith, that government violates the fundamental rights of free expression and the free exercise of religion.

The far larger underlying issue, of course, is the critique authored by Qutb from his Egyptian jail cell over fifty years ago.

The bin Laden/Qutb strain of contemporary Islam condemns the classic western civil liberties values of universal tolerance (expressed in the preceding paragraph) as being precisely the central problem with the modern world - the core reason human beings separate their daily activities from the will of God and suffer accordingly - rather than being the institutional solution to the never ending, recurrent outbreaks of evil and sectarian violence that have plagued mankind ever since the beginning of recorded history. I find this theological critique of the assumed virtues of religious tolerance and free speech intriguing, an intellectual challenge well worth further serious thought and discussion.

And therein lies the rub. Jailing people like Kareem for his thoughts and discussions undermines the ability of devout people everywhere to think and to communicate with one another the great mysteries of life, and about that which the devout (and the doubters) sincerely hold most dear.

No offense intended, but we may excuse Qutb personally for clinging to this stark world view because he was philosophizing from a prison cell between torture sessions. Qutb was, after all, a man of such cultural sensitivity that he found a dance date to an early 1950's American midwest prom to be sexually scandalous.

That's his excuse. What's Mubarak's?