After very depressing news, a ray of hope: the upper house of Afghanistan's parliament has dropped its support for a death sentence issued last week against a young journalist found guilty of blasphemy.
Pervez Kambakhsh, 23, works and studies in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif. Photos show a soft boyish face smudged with a feathery moustache.
Kambakhsh recently handed out a tract at his university stating that Quranic arguments for the oppression of women misinterpreted Islam. The local Islamic court decided he should die.
But after initially supporting the sentence, Afghanistan's parliament has backed down on the grounds that Kambakhsh was denied proper legal representation.
If not quite a victory for religious tolerance in post-Taliban Afghanistan, the parliament's move is at least a victory for the rule of constitutional law. And it may yet save the doomed journalist; the case continues.
Comments (1)
If this is a ray of hope, beam me up : Afghanistan is not post-Taliban. Wake up! And as for "a soft boyish face smudged with a feathery moustache"....what is that all about? This posting is deeply dubious.
Posted by anthony norman | February 7, 2008 11:29 PM
Posted on February 7, 2008 23:29