Christian faces execution in Afghanistan
Our troops are in Afghanistan protecting fascist Islamic law?
Abdul Rahman is charged with the crime of leaving the faith of Islam and now faces the
death penalty:
Now, in a major test of Afghanistan's fledgling court system, Rahman, 42, faces the death penalty for abandoning Islam for Christianity. Prosecutors say he should die. So do his family, his jailers, even the judge. Rahman has no lawyer. Jail officials refused to let anyone see Rahman on Monday, despite permission granted by the country's justice minister.
"We will cut him into little pieces," said Hosnia Wafayosofi, who works at the jail, as she made a cutting motion with her hands. "There's no need to see him."
"If he doesn't regret his conversion, the punishment will be enforced on him," the judge said. "And the punishment is death."
Italy and Germany are trying to save him.
Sign a petition supporting Rahman's right to live.
Send your thoughts to the Afghanistan
embassy in Ottawa and Foreign Affairs minister
Peter MacKay.
.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Today is International Women's Day, so I decided to focus on one particularly courageous woman. Now an MP in the Dutch parliament,
Ayaan Hirsi Ali was born and raised in Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and Kenya. She fled to Holland at age 22, to escape an arranged marriage to a cousin in Canada that she had never met. She learned Dutch, worked her way through university and held positions within government and politics, before being elected to the
Tweede Kamer. Her outspokeness in regards to Islam has resulted in constant death threats, so for the past few years she has had continual bodyguard and police protection.
She wrote and narrated
Submission, a controversial film about Islam's treatment of women. The film's director,
Theo Van Gogh, was murdered by Mohammed Bouyeri while biking to work in 2004. A five page note pinned to his body that stated that Hirsi Ali (and others) was next. She went into hiding in Holland and New York City, but has returned to parliament, more determined to
speak her mind than ever.
Submission was originally shown on Dutch public TV, but since the violence and threats of violence, it was
pulled from a film festival out of fear. Hirsi Ali is now working on a sequel, dealing with four Muslim mens' - one of them gay - experiences with Islam. A Dutch court ruled against religious groups trying to block its' release. "By not making 'Submission Part II,' I would only be helping terrorists believe that if they use violence, they're rewarded with what they want," says Hirsi Ali. As a woman who once called the Prophet Muhammed was a "pervert" for marrying a nine year-old girl, it isn't surprising that she also been
critical of the West's response the the whole cartoon issue.
"Don't be silenced by extremists"
In yesterday's
Toronto Star, eleven Canadian Muslim academics and activists published a
plea to fellow Canadians:
Today, the religious right and autocracies in the so-called Islamic world are united in their call for passing legislation to make any discussion on religion a criminal offence. This, at a time when many writers in Jordan, Iran, Yemen, Pakistan and Afghanistan are rotting in jails, facing charges of apostasy and blasphemy.
We call on Canadian politicians and intellectuals to stand up for freedom of expression.
Yesterday's
Jyllands-Posten featured a
manifesto, signed by eleven intellectuals, including Canadian Muslim
Irshad Manji:
We reject « cultural relativism », which consists in accepting that men and women of Muslim culture should be deprived of the right to equality, freedom and secular values in the name of respect for cultures and traditions. We refuse to renounce our critical spirit out of fear of being accused of "Islamophobia", an unfortunate concept which confuses criticism of Islam as a religion with stigmatisation of its believers.
To blaspheme or not to blaspheme?
Is this cartoon blasphemous and offensive to some? Without a doubt. Is it funny? I think so.
The Strand, a student newspaper at the University of Toronto, published this cartoon of Jesus and a faceless Muhammed kissing. The Student Administrative Council wrote to the paper and stated that the cartoon is an "act of hate" and an "offensive and appalling attack on all Muslims". Managing Editor Nick Ragaz
maintains that "The cartoon is a sort of Canadian statement on religious tolerance...it can not, under any circumstances, be understood to promote violence or hate". The President of U of T's Victoria University and the Student Union are standing by the publication.
The Western Standard and the
Jewish Free Press both published those other cartoons last week and were met with a call to the police by some Muslim groups. Calgary's crown prosecuter said today that there would be
no charges against these magazines, as
the Criminal Code requires there be an intent to incite hatred against a specific group, and his office had determined there was no intent in this case.
The response of Syed Souharmardy, president of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada, caught my eye though, as he stated that his organization will begin lobbying for
legislative changes so that offensive remarks or depictions of any religious figure are considered a crime.I'm confident that their lobbying efforts to criminalize blasphemy will prove unsuccessful, but his intentions deserve more scrutiny. Such legislative changes would affect everything from
The Family Guy to art galleries and would be an enforcement nightmare. Who would be the barometer of what's offensive and who would determine which religious sects make the legal cut? Free speech and religious freedom mean that people can publish things that are in bad taste, offensive and that no one religion can use the force of the State to ensure all citizens observe its traditions or taboos.
The Strand can publish blasphemous cartoons,
Southpark can feature an animated Prophet Muhammed fighting the Lincoln Memorial and free speech can be used to try and convert others to observant Christians, Muslims... or Scientologists. Atheists can say fuck all religious figures.
Most Canadian Muslims respect these rights and have exercised them over the past few weeks, speaking out against the cartoons, protesting and boycotting. The Muslim Canadian Congress has expressed its offense, but does not support making offensive speech illegal. Some retailers exercised their right to pull
The Western Standard from their newstands. Those who are offended by Air Canada or Indigo's decision not to sell the magazine can take their business elsewhere.
It should stay this way and Souharmardy's ideas deserve to go the way of
Sharia Law in Ontario.
Jyllands-Posten editor defends himself
Flemming Rose, the Danish editor who first published the twelve infamous Muhammed cartoons in the September 30, 2005 edition of the
Jyllands-Posten, has written a defense of his decision in today's
Washington Post:
Since the Sept. 30 publication of the cartoons, we have had a constructive debate in Denmark and Europe about freedom of expression, freedom of religion and respect for immigrants and people's beliefs. Never before have so many Danish Muslims participated in a public dialogue -- in town hall meetings, letters to editors, opinion columns and debates on radio and TV. We have had no anti-Muslim riots, no Muslims fleeing the country and no Muslims committing violence. The radical imams who misinformed their counterparts in the Middle East about the situation for Muslims in Denmark have been marginalized. They no longer speak for the Muslim community in Denmark because moderate Muslims have had the courage to speak out against them.
Rose's entire
commentary is worth a read, whatever your opinion on the controversy.
The SAFS expresses concern to UPEI
The
Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship has written a letter to UPEI president Wade Maclauchlan, expressing concern about the February 8th
issue of
The Cadre.
Clive Seligman, president of the SAFS, notes that
Fear of possible ‘mob action’ must not be allowed to dictate to UPEI or any other Canadian university what ideas its students and faculty may express, disseminate and debate. By censoring this debate at your campus rather than taking the necessary steps to provide appropriate security to allow debate to happen, you have encouraged the view that the threat of violence, real or imagined, is an effective way to challenge ideas with which one disagrees.
Read the whole letter
here.
Psiphon: the anti-censor
(Photo: Deborah Baic)
This May, a team of researchers from
Citizen Lab, at the U of T, will be unveiling a program called Psiphon at the international congress of
PEN, a free speech organization with branches in over 100
countries.
The Globe and Mail:
More than fifteen years after the Berlin Wall was shattered with hammers and bulldozers, a Canadian-designed computer program is preparing to break through what activists call the great firewall of China.
The program, in the late stages of development in a University of Toronto office, is designed to help those trapped behind the blocking and filtering systems set up by restrictive governments. If successful, it will equip volunteers in more open countries to help those on the other side of digital barriers, allowing a free flow of information and news into and out of even the most closed societies.
Great news for writers in repressive countries all over the world.
The Inquirer notes the difficulty for government officials who specialize in censoring online information about such topics as Tibeten independence, democracy and the Tinanmen Square massacre of 1989:
[Psiphon] enters users' machines through computer port 443, which is designed to transport secure data for banking. If China wanted to close this avenue down, it would also have to shut off a lot of its foreign electronic banking operations.
Once again, the Internet is proven to be
the medium of free speech.
Olympic Sexism
The International Ski Federation has decided that ski jumping is too dangerous for
women, so it has become the one sport in Torino that has only male competitors.
"It's like jumping down from, let's say, about two meters on the ground about a thousand times a year, which seems not to be appropriate for ladies from a medical point of view," the federation's president Gian Franco Kasper said.Despite Kasper's opinion, some ladies have decided that this particular sport is "appropriate" for them.
"I don't know what he's talking about because clearly he has not seen us jump in the last two years," said Lindsey Van, the second-ranked female ski jumper in the world. "Our technique is as good, if not better than, the men."There are about five hundred women competing on the international level and two of the top-ranked jumpers are Canadians. If you think
Katie Willis and
Atsuko Tanaka should have the chance to be Olympians in Vancouver, you can contact
The International Ski Federation, who are voting this spring about whether to include women's ski jumping in the 2010 Olympics.
Gone down the memory hole
I never did get a copy of
The Cadre into my possession, as the UPEI student union asserted their
ownership rights over this week's issue:
A copy editor at The Cadre, Rob Walker, said he was called into the office of the general manager of the student union, Heather Love, on Friday afternoon. "[I] was told, on the advice of their lawyers, I should be told a number of things. Primarily, the paper was actually owned by the student union, and they demanded its return, and if it wasn't returned they would contact the police," Walker says.
Ray Keating did not intend to offend, but wanted people to be able to have an informed discussion:
"The message really has been that we want people to be able to have an effective discourse on the issue, and we felt that people wouldn't be able to have an effective discourse without actually seeing the original cartoons."
Here's an excerpt from the SU's
statement:
[...]it is now apparent that we must take into account the overwhelming reaction that these cartoons have caused worldwide and therefore we must react accordingly. It is also to be noted that there is a great deal of sensitivity involved with this contentious issue, a fact personified by the recent outrage and riots that were sparked in direct result of the publication of these cartoons.
So, it appears that the student union shares the view that
cartoonists caused the violent riots (rather than the Islamofascist fundamentalists) and that our reaction should be self-censorship - not a defense of free speech.
The SU is within their rights, as the student government owns the paper. However, this ownership is via the students whose mandatory fees fund
The Cadre. Once hired, the newspaper staff normally have editorial control - independent of the student government. Threatening to involve the police to repossess the student newspaper is an extreme step.
It is great to see that the SU has reversed one decision, though. Whether due to student pressure, national media coverage, or a realization of the obvious, the student union has
reopened debate about the cartoon issue on UPEI weblogs.
Cartoon Craziness
The Cadre, UPEI's student newspaper has published the twelve infamous editorial cartoons that criticized aspects of Islam.
At the request of president Wade MacLauchlan, university administrators have
removed all 2,000 copies of the paper from campus.
The campus police also showed up at the office of Ray Keating, the paper's editor, and asked that he hand over any copies in his possession, a request he refused to comply with. Read Keating's editorial
here.
The UPEI Student Union has
withdrawn support of this week's issue of
The Cadre and has also stated that
Weblogs@UPEI "are no longer accepting comments on the cartoon issue" CTV's Steve Murphy noted during his broadcast tonight that it appears that they are now "censoring discussion about censorship".
Wade MacLauchlan stated that “
... The Cadre has been a very good newspaper this year but there is no need for UPEI to step recklessly into a situation that has caused violence and mounting violence all over the world,’’
And that is the real issue. Should people who publish cartoons feel responsible for the actions of those who burn embassies and shout for their murder? Should we self-censor and blame ourselves for these violent reactions?
Cartoons about the cartoons
here.
