Afghan Reporter gets 20 years

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- cosmicdancer
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Afghan Reporter gets 20 years
OP - October 21, 2008, 08:00 PM

23-year-old journalist Perwiz Kambakhsh, is spared the death penalty but gets 20 years for “disseminating defamatory comments about Islam.”

http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2008/10/21/58650.html
- cosmicdancer
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Re: Afghan Reporter gets 20 years
Reply #1 - October 21, 2008, 08:03 PM

From the article:

The reporter and university journalism student was arrested after he printed off the Internet and distributed an article that allegedly questions some tenets of Islam and aspects of Prophet Mohammad.

He has alleged torture during his year-long detention and said his initial trial in Mazar-i-Sharif lasted only minutes and he was given no legal representation.

At Tuesday's hearing, five of his former lecturers testified that Kambakhsh had asked them "anti-Islam and insulting questions."

But a classmate, identified only as Hamid, said his earlier testimony at the first trial had been made under pressure from the country's intelligence department.
- Lana
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Re: Afghan Reporter gets 20 years
Reply #2 - October 21, 2008, 08:26 PM

"anti-Islam and insulting questions." :(

Asking questions is the start of growing knowledge. Aren't teachers supposed to encourage that?

Though it has no bridge,
The cloud climbs up to heaven;
It does not seek the aid
Of Gautama's sutras.

- Ikkyu
- Cheetah
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Re: Afghan Reporter gets 20 years
Reply #3 - October 21, 2008, 08:38 PM

20 years for questioning tenets of Islam. Great, I'm so pleased that we toppled the oppressive Islamist extremists of the Taliban to replace them with a whole new set of Islamist extremists who are slightly less oppressive.

I suppose at least he hasn't had his brains blown out on a football pitch.

"Befriend them not, Oh murtads, and give them neither parrot nor bunny." - happymurtad's advice on trolls.
- speaklow
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Re: Afghan Reporter gets 20 years
Reply #4 - October 21, 2008, 09:57 PM

I'm just about to do my tax return.

It's great to know that our tax dollars are going to help prop up the government in Kabul, oh yeah and pay for protracted diplomatic talks with the apocalyptic Shia fanatics in Tehran as well as the other Islam related expenditure we have to swallow just to keep safe.... feel safe.

I'm beginning to think SbMuse was right when he said Islam was a scourge on humanity.

By the way what's happened to him, he made some great posts.

And what about DivineMercy for that matter?
- osmanthus
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Re: Afghan Reporter gets 20 years
Reply #5 - October 21, 2008, 10:22 PM

I don't know where SB went but since his family are still Muslim he may have decided to lay off forums for a while to keep the peace at home. That would be perfectly understandable if it were the case.

DivineMercy was getting ready to leave the middle East after many years and return home. I expect she's been very busy. She said she wouldn't be around for a while. I'd like to hear from her again myself.

Devious, treacherous, murderous, neanderthal, sub-human of the West.
- speaklow
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Re: Afghan Reporter gets 20 years
Reply #6 - October 21, 2008, 10:32 PM

Quote from: osmanthus on October 21, 2008, 10:22 PM
I don't know where SB went but since his family are still Muslim he may have decided to lay off forums for a while to keep the peace at home. That would be perfectly understandable if it were the case.

DivineMercy was getting ready to leave the middle East after many years and return home. I expect she's been very busy. She said she wouldn't be around for a while. I'd like to hear from her again myself.

Thanks for the update.
- Sally
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Re: Afghan Reporter gets 20 years
Reply #7 - October 22, 2008, 12:05 AM

Quote from: Hassan on October 21, 2008, 08:00 PM
23-year-old journalist Perwiz Kambakhsh, is spared the death penalty but gets 20 years for “disseminating defamatory comments about Islam.”

http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2008/10/21/58650.html

Is there anything we can do to help this person?
- neilmarr
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Re: Afghan Reporter gets 20 years
Reply #8 - October 22, 2008, 06:54 AM

When I consider everything I did and all my achievements (admitedly modest) between the ages of twenty-three and fort-three -- the travel, the excitement, the wonder and discovery, the rough-and-tumble of wins and losses, my two children, my friends, my family, my career -- it registers just what a twenty-year sentence will mean to this young man. His life is in tatters for doing the self-same job I did as a reporter. Asking questions gave me everything, asking questions has robbed him of a future and the rich, human experience I was so lucky to have handed to me, freely, on a plate. And his 'crime'? Daring people to think. Isn't a secular world worth striving for! Neil

PS: Don't know if anyone's noticed my signature line below. I wrote it after hearing a Swedish General in Afghanistan last year tell a TV interviewer: "We are not here to fight the Taliban, we are here to make the Taliban irrelevant." Seems there's a lot of work yet to be done in that benighted corner of the world. N

We are not here to fight religion. We are here to make religion irrelevant. NM
- BerberElla
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Re: Afghan Reporter gets 20 years
Reply #9 - October 22, 2008, 10:54 AM

Quote from: Cheetah on October 21, 2008, 08:38 PM
20 years for questioning tenets of Islam. Great, I'm so pleased that we toppled the oppressive Islamist extremists of the Taliban to replace them with a whole new set of Islamist extremists who are slightly less oppressive.

I suppose at least he hasn't had his brains blown out on a football pitch.

+1

It's just saddening to think that so many lives have been lost in afghanistan for so little real change.

Women are still burning themselves to death, being married off under age and people still get pathetic sentences like this just because they are using their brains, but like you said the progress is that he is still alive.

Inhale the good shit, exhale the bullshit.
- Calm
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Re: Afghan Reporter gets 20 years
Reply #10 - October 22, 2008, 11:55 AM

I lurk around Ummah (Will never register or post!), I see some people support Taliban. I feel it so hypocritic. Most of the posters on Ummah are form the UK, they live a comfortable life and have a lot of independence when it comes to study, career, marriage. However, they don't wish the same for people in Afghanistan especially for females. It is so easy to do west bashing and Taliban admiring, while enjoying all the choices which west has to offer.

Quote from: BerberElla on October 22, 2008, 10:54 AM
Women are still burning themselves to death, being married off under age and people still get pathetic sentences like this just because they are using their brains, but like you said the progress is that he is still alive.
- cosmicdancer
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Re: Afghan Reporter gets 20 years
Reply #11 - October 22, 2008, 09:55 PM

Quote from: Sally on October 22, 2008, 12:05 AM
Quote from: Hassan on October 21, 2008, 08:00 PM
23-year-old journalist Perwiz Kambakhsh, is spared the death penalty but gets 20 years for “disseminating defamatory comments about Islam.”

http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2008/10/21/58650.html

Is there anything we can do to help this person?

I was thinking that too. It stinks - as speaklow said, that the UK/USA have helped install this govt. and so are party to this. It is outrageous enough as it is - but the way the British press (and I others) are so silent on this is disturbing.

When I attended the demo in support of him there were only about 15 of us there - despite attempts by the CEMB to drum up interest in the mainstream media and with MPs - none were interested.

Why? Because this Islamic govt is on OUR side.
- cosmicdancer
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Re: Afghan Reporter gets 20 years
Reply #12 - October 22, 2008, 10:02 PM

Quote from: learn2bcalm on October 22, 2008, 11:55 AM
It is so easy to do west bashing and Taliban admiring, while enjoying all the choices which west has to offer.

Yes, spot on! I used to be on that forum a few years ago (when I was still a Muslim - you can look up my posts - I was the user "Peace" and then "cosmicdancer") and I was mercissly attacked left right an centre for criticising the Taliban (and Shari'ah Law - and calling for reform/reinterpretation). Ummah is a very Salafi orientated forum - but most would never want to leave the comfort and freedom of the west - just talk the talk.
- IHSoter
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Re: Afghan Reporter gets 20 years
Reply #13 - October 23, 2008, 04:28 AM

People don't want to comment on these sorts of things because of what it implies for the very possibility of authentic liberal & democratic reform in the Islamic world. Karsai is about the best we can hope to find in that part of the world, & this is allowed under his gov't. How long can he last also? After him who will emerge as leaders in Af-stan? Many people who are simps for the Taliban are just biding their time in Af-stan. The Taliban are training & reequiping in the house of their P-stan/ISI masters.

Is there any real hope for the Middle East short of measures on a par w/ the sort of militant secularisation of an Atta Turk? Is that the sort we should support in this part of the world, militarists who are willing to arrest defiant mullahs & persuade them w/ Atta Turk style tactics? It is what is happening in the old Soviet -stans. Members of the old Soviet nomenclatura are maintaining (w/ much Kremlin support) secular Western oriented gov'ts by brutally the Taliban types.

This is my dark despairing question:
Is it possible for the West to solve its Middle East Question (which is really an Islam Question) w/o resorting to Western oriented militaristic strongmen who will use extreme measures of violence to exterpate Islamic identity from the people in that part of the world?

"We must rid ourselves once and for all of the Quaker-Papist babble about the sanctity of human life." --Leon Trotsky
- Zaephon
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Re: Afghan Reporter gets 20 years
Reply #14 - October 23, 2008, 04:10 PM

Quote from: IHSoter
Is there any real hope for the Middle East short of measures on a par w/ the sort of militant secularisation of an Atta Turk? Is that the sort we should support in this part of the world, militarists who are willing to arrest defiant mullahs & persuade them w/ Atta Turk style tactics? It is what is happening in the old Soviet -stans. Members of the old Soviet nomenclatura are maintaining (w/ much Kremlin support) secular Western oriented gov'ts by brutally the Taliban types.

Well, the militant secularisation of Ataturk has been fading away, gradually. It seems Muslim majorities are happy with their Islamic opium, blaming the West for everything. The devolution of secularism in Turkiye has been a mostly majority-oriented process, I'm afraid. Democracy is pretty meaningless without the auxilliary values that are attached thereto in the West. Without such support, democracy is reduced to the tyranny of the majority.

I am afraid this takes us back to the concept of enlightened, pro-Western tyrants which has been so prominent in the management of the Middle East so far, with catastrophic results. Before any democratic revolution takes place, criticism of Islam, or at least certain aspects of Islam, must spread. As long as Islam is left untouched, there can be no true freedom in the Middle East. Pragmatic and restricted reforms, as in the case of Turkiye, is not enough.

Turkic Republics are secular only because of communist influence. If only petroleum were made obsolete...

Islam: where idiots meet terrorists.
- neilmarr
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Re: Afghan Reporter gets 20 years
Reply #15 - October 23, 2008, 07:15 PM

*** If only petroleum were made obsolete...***

Many a true word, Zaephon, is tossed away in a kiss-off line. It's too late, of course (at least ifor current generations), to wish we'd never been cursed with oil, but its existence is what benights our times. It brings religion into capitalism and vice versa. Neither cockeyed passion is beneficial to our planet or our species. Neil

We are not here to fight religion. We are here to make religion irrelevant. NM
- Zaephon
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Re: Afghan Reporter gets 20 years
Reply #16 - October 23, 2008, 07:29 PM

Quote from: neilmarr on October 23, 2008, 07:15 PM
*** If only petroleum were made obsolete...***

Many a true word, Zaephon, is tossed away in a kiss-off line. It's too late, of course (at least ifor current generations), to wish we'd never been cursed with oil, but its existence is what benights our times. It brings religion into capitalism and vice versa. Neither cockeyed passion is beneficial to our planet or our species. Neil

I don't think it's too late. We should appreciate whatever we can salvage from this wreck... if you know what I mean. A world without petroleum would be with less pollution, less terrorism, and less fanaticism.

But of course, that last line was just my humble wish. We can but dream, cannot we?

Islam: where idiots meet terrorists.
- neilmarr
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Re: Afghan Reporter gets 20 years
Reply #17 - October 23, 2008, 07:43 PM

Zeaphon ... don't even start to excuse yourself. If this sad old species of ours has a glimmer of hope, it lies in the kind of optimism you express. I'm happy to share this page with you. Neil

We are not here to fight religion. We are here to make religion irrelevant. NM
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