Sentenced to Death

A 23-year-old Afghan reporter and college student has been sentenced to death for distributing a controversial article about Islamic treatment of women that he downloaded from the Internet:

Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh… a reporter for the daily Jahan-e Naw and a journalism student at Balkh University, was arrested Oct. 27 in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e Sharif, an area where mullahs hold particular influence over law and cultural life.

His alleged offense was distributing to classmates a report, printed from a Web site, commenting on a Muslim woman's right to multiple marriages. The article, written in Farsi, which is close to the Dari language spoken in Afghanistan, questioned why men are allowed to have four spouses in Islam while women are denied the same right.

Without a lawyer to represent him, Kambakhsh was hustled Tuesday into a small hearing room where three judges and a prosecutor conducted a five-minute proceeding, according to his older brother.

He was then handed a piece of paper saying he had acted against Islam and should be executed, said the brother, Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi, who visited him in prison Wednesday night.

~The Washington Post, 25 January 2008: Read complete article HERE

For a more detailed report, click HERE

If I suffered from high blood pressure, steam would have been pouring from my ears when I heard this report of Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh’s “trial” and death sentence mourning on the BBC’s Reporting Religion. You may listen to what I heard by clicking HERE.


I am sick of the hatred, violence, prejudice, and injustice advanced by religious fundamentalism, no matter what the flavor—Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, etc. I have written about fundamentalism and the menace of its zealots to the peace and justice of the world. I won’t repeat myself here, but if you want to read what I wrote back in 2005, click HERE.

More and more words and thoughts are coming under attack. It’s crazy! What if you were to print this post and share it with some friends, then a few months later the police knocked on your door, placed you under arrest, held you in prison for months, and then, after a five minute trial, sentenced you to death for sharing something that I had written?

Absurd, you say, it couldn’t happen. But it has happened and will happen again. And I can bitch, and moan, and complain about it because, at least at the moment, I have the freedom to do so in this blog. But even that freedom is not guaranteed.

So I must do something regarding in injustice perpetrated by these Islamic fundamentalists on this young man, Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh. I understand that at this only Afghan President Hamid Karzai can save his life. So I am writing and emailing the President of Afghanistan pleading for justice. Will you join me?

Official Website of Afghan President Hamid Karzai

Email address of President Hamid Karzai president@afghanistangov.org

Snail mail address of President Hamid Karzai:

President Hamid Karzai
Gul Khana Palace
Presidential Palace
Kabul, Afghanistan

Norman Rockwell (1894-1978)