Sites Holmquist trys, and often fails, to go no more than a couple of days without visiting (some of which Holmquist regularly swipes links from without attribution)
The fatwa department of Afghanistan's supreme court has recommended that two journalists from a weekly newspaper that published articles some people consider blasphemous be put to death.
After protests by religious students in Kabul targeting the Aftab paper, the highest court in the land ordered its fatwa department - which employs Sharia religious law and deals with important religious issues - to look into the case. Its members overwhelmingly backed the proposed death penalty for Aftab chief editor Mirhassan Mahdawi and his colleague Ali Raza Payam...
Showing humans as evolving from apes is against the Koran, the ruling said. The proposal ends with the declaration, "The Islamic Transitional Government of Afghanistan is obliged to give the death penalty to the people who have abused or made fun of Islam, and also to the ones who cause public disruption."
The Bonn Agreement requires the government to adhere to the essentially secular 1964 constitution - at the time viewed as the most advanced for a Muslim country - but it is debating a new one, which is to be approved by the Loya Jirga in October.
This constitution must resolve the difficult issue of whether Islamic or secular law will have precedence. The fatwa department's ruling appears to be its attempt to draw a clear line in the sand on that issue.
This isn't happening in a country like Israel, which the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel has recently said is now regularly torturing Palestinians, that merely gets aid from the United States, but rather a country that is run by the U.S. military more than any other government.
The Bush Administration probably won't go that far inside of the U.S. but not for any reason of principle. posted by micah holmquist at 8/20/2003 04:43:00 PM
