January 22, 2008
Good News: "Moderate" Regime in Afghanistan Sentences Student to Death for Blasphemy
I've already reported on the plight of Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh, the Afghan student accused of "mocking Islam and the Quran". Up until now, though, a death sentence for the journalism student for blasphemy was only a potential.
Now an Afghan court has actually sentenced Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh to death.
For blasphemy.
Yes, Islamic law really does call for the death penalty for blasphemy. Why? Because under the Islamist world view blasphemy is a form of treason.
Jesus wept.
If you follow the link below to the Fox News story you'll see that the objection by friends and family to the death penalty is not over freedom of speech or religion, but rather on procedural grounds. Not that one should be free to criticize Islam if one wants, but that the trial was secret and that Kambakhsh didn't have a lawyer. That he wasn't guilty of the crime, not that the crime itself is absurd.
Jesus wept. Again.
The so-called moderate Islamists don't want to legalize blasphemy, a minimum requirement for modernity. No, the moderates want to replace the death penalty with fines or jail time.
This is political Islam.
As to whether this means our efforts in Afghanistan have failed, please see my previous post on Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh and the difference between "allies" and "friends".
An Afghan court on Tuesday sentenced a 23-year-old journalism student to death for distributing a paper he printed off the Internet that three judges said violated the tenets of Islam, an official said.The three-judge panel sentenced Sayad Parwez Kambaksh to death for distributing a paper that humiliated Islam, said Fazel Wahab, the chief judge in the northern province of Balkh, where the trial took place. Wahab did not preside over the trial.
Kambaksh's family and the head of a journalists group denounced the verdict and said Kambaksh was not represented by a lawyer at trial. Members of a clerics council had been pushing for Kambaksh to be punished.
