Afghan man receives 20 years for blasphemy

Allowing the Iraqis and Afghans to make shariah the highest law shows that the State Department has no clue who and what we are fighting.

It's a depressing situation, al Qaida, the taliban, al Shabaab, and every other jihadist groups are fighting to implement shariah/islamic law across the whole world. We're fighting them to supposedly stop them from achieving their goal. Yet we've allowed shariah to be implented in Afghanistan and Iraq.

It's necessary to fight al Qaida etc...but at the same time we must be sure what we're fighting for. The peaceniks in the State Department certainly don't. CBC

An Afghan appeals court has overturned a death sentence for a journalism student convicted of blasphemy and instead sentenced him to 20 years in prison.

A three-judge panel sentenced Parwez Kambakhsh, 24, to prison Tuesday after a day of arguments between the student's defence lawyer and state witnesses.

Kambakhsh was studying journalism at Balkh University in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif and writing for local newspapers when he was arrested in October 2007 for allegedly distributing material downloaded from the internet that asked questions about the role of women in Islam.

The material, written in Farsi, the language of Iran, asked why a Muslim man may have four wives but women can't have multiple husbands.

The material also said Muslim fundamentalists err in their interpretation of the Qur'an by insisting women have to be subject to men.

A lower court sentenced him to death in a trial that human rights groups have condemned as illegal. Kambakhsh has said he was forbidden to speak in his own defence.