Freedom From Within
So I’m not one for world politics, well not normally anyway, but today I read a post on TA regarding a news article about a situation in Afghanistan.
Sentenced to death: Afghan who dared to read about women’s rights
By Kim Sengupta
Thursday, 31 January 2008A young man, a student of journalism, is sentenced to death by an Islamic court for downloading a report from the internet. The sentence is then upheld by the country’s rulers. This is Afghanistan – not in Taliban times but six years after “liberation” and under the democratic rule of the West’s ally Hamid Karzai.
The fate of Sayed Pervez Kambaksh has led to domestic and international protests, and deepening concern about erosion of civil liberties in Afghanistan. He was accused of blasphemy after he downloaded a report from a Farsi website which stated that Muslim fundamentalists who claimed the Koran justified the oppression of women had misrepresented the views of the prophet Mohamed.
Mr Kambaksh, 23, distributed the tract to fellow students and teachers at Balkh University with the aim, he said, of provoking a debate on the matter. But a complaint was made against him and he was arrested, tried by religious judges without – say his friends and family – being allowed legal representation and sentenced to death.
The Independent is launching a campaign today to secure justice for Mr Kambaksh. The UN, human rights groups, journalists’ organisations and Western diplomats have urged Mr Karzai’s government to intervene and free him. But the Afghan Senate passed a motion yesterday confirming the death sentence.
Read the full article here.
Anyways, the debate began and one user posed this question:
you almost have to ask yourself after reading about something like this — is this what we should look forward to with Iraq as well?
for all the hype and rhetoric about getting rid of evil rulers and freeing peoples who have suffered a lack of freedoms and rights… are we allowing the old guard to be replaced with more of the old guard?
I thought about this for a moment and my views are as follows:
We all know by now that the US weren’t/aren’t there (in Afghanistan or any other country for that matter) for humanitarian reasons so they should stop pretending that they were/are. We should be asking who or what was being liberated?
Had the allied forces intervened and empowered the people to take control of their own government and fight for democracy/freedom then maybe it would have been a different scenario. It doesn’t appear that way.
Either way change needs to come from within.
I’m certainly not agreeing with the actions of the Afghan government on this case, and I’m rather disappointed by it, however I question the motives behind the occupation of foreign soil especially after the whole “weapons of mass destruction” debacle.
I can only hope that in time people will learn to treat each other with respect, love, and dignity and that religion ceases to be used the way it has been by certain groups.
Gentleness, self-sacrifice and generosity are the exclusive possession of no one race or religion. — Gandhi
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