Afghanistan's Rushdie

IBD ^ | February 12, 2008

[Kaslin]

Islamofascism: Six years ago, we liberated Afghanistan from the religious tyranny of the Taliban. So why is the new government there sentencing alleged blasphemers to death?

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An Afghan court has ordered the execution of a 23-year-old Afghan journalist on charges of "blasphemy" and "disseminating defamatory comments about Islam."

Sayed Parwez Kaambakhsh committed the heinous crime of downloading and distributing a document from a Web site critical of the oppressive treatment of women under Islam.

Reporters Without Borders and other press-rights groups have intervened on his behalf. But Afghan President Hamid Karzai, while expressing concern, says the courts should do their work.

Problem is, the lawyer hired by the family to defend the young journalist did not dare attend his trial for fear of reprisals. Now they're looking for a new, bulletproof lawyer. Adding insult to injury, the deposed Taliban have given their blessing to the primitive sentence, condemning Kaambakhsh as "the new Salman Rushdie."

It's not the first time this has happened in post-Taliban Afghanistan. Two years ago, the new, allegedly democratic regime we helped to install there ordered the beheading of a 41-year-old Afghan man. Abdul Rahman's crime? Converting to Christianity.

[The Truth Will Make You Free]

On a related topic, I was at the Educational Development Forum in Kabul yesterday with President Karzai as a speaker. There are 5 development programs, with Program 5 being “Islamic education”. Granted the 5-year funds requested are only $36 million out of a total budget of $2.5 billion. The program is being presented “to develop a broad-based Islamic education system for all Afghans” as an alternative to the hate-producing madrassas. Still, the fact that the government system supported by the international development community is being used to strengthen Islam in the children of Afghanistan makes one question what is going on here.

[G8 Diplomat]

The Taliban may be gone, but Islam is not. Wherever there is Islam, this sort of thing will creep back up...if it’s in the Koran, the “moderates” will do it too, as well as the radicals. Islam is incompatible with democracy. That is why it’s not working in Afghanistan.

[G8 Diplomat]

....then again, Karzai named Ahmad Shah Massoud who fought against al-Qaida “hero of the Afghan nation,” and as mentioned in the previous post suggested alternatives for madrassas. There seem to be two faces here, just like in Pakistan.

[pangenesis]

Deuteronomy 13:6

If your very own brother, or your son or daughter, or the wife you love, or your closest friend secretly entices you, saying, "Let us go and worship other gods" (gods that neither you nor your fathers have known, 7 gods of the peoples around you, whether near or far, from one end of the land to the other), 8 do not yield to him or listen to him. Show him no pity. Do not spare him or shield him. 9 You must certainly put him to death. Your hand must be the first in putting him to death, and then the hands of all the people. 10 Stone him to death, because he tried to turn you away from the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.