Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes Are Choking Freedom Worldwide (26 page)

Kambakhsh’s older brother, Sayed Yaqup Ibrahimi, says that the trial, which took place in a closed session with three judges, lasted for five minutes. Some reporters’ groups contend that the trial was really a ploy intended to intimidate Ibrahimi, who had recently accused an Afghan politician of ties to violent crime. Kambakhsh says he was not permitted to have an attorney or to speak in his own defense. The regional Attorney General responded that the defendant chose to forgo an attorney.

Kambakhsh’s accusers claim that he confessed to writing parts of the article—including the part that said, “The prophet Mohammad wrote verses of the Holy Qur’an just for his own benefit.” Kambakhsh maintains that he made this admission only under torture. On January 22, 2008, he was convicted of blasphemy and sentenced to death under Article 130 of the constitution, which states that when there is no national law, the court should decide in accordance with the Hanafi school of Islamic jurisprudence.
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After the sentencing, some Afghan journalists were warned by a deputy Attorney General of Balkh province that if they took up Kambakhsh’s case, they also would face arrest.
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The Afghan Senate initially expressed its support for the death sentence but, in the face of international protest, said that this approval had been a “technical mistake.” It affirmed that the defendant should have the right to counsel but also that “[t]he nature of the sentence, considering the judiciary’s independence, would be up to the court itself.”
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Kambakhsh sought to appeal the verdict but, due to fear of retribution by opponents, initially had difficulty finding a lawyer. His case then went before the Kabul appeals court. In a June 15, 2008, preliminary hearing, the presiding judge, Abdul Salam Qazizada, spoke as if already convinced of Kambakhsh’s guilt, demanding of the defendant, “Just tell me why you did these things…It is clear that this text belongs to you.” He went on to imply that some of the classmates should also have been arrested.
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On October 21, 2008, the appeals court heard the charges, and the prosecution’s case nearly fell apart. A fellow student, Hamed, who had earlier testified that Kambakhsh had given him the offending article, replied no when asked if he stood by his statement, and he added that he had been forced to make the statement after a literature professor escorted him to the university director’s office, and two strangers, whom he believed were from the National Security Directorate, ordered him to write a statement against Kambakhsh. Hamed testified, “I wrote what they told me. I was scared. They threatened my mother, my father…” When prosecutor Akhmad Khan Ayar hinted that he could be tried for perjury, Hamed replied, “I accept responsibility.” During the trial, several professors from Balkh
University testified that they had complained because Kambakhsh asked provocative questions in class. Shahabuddin Saqeb, a teacher in the sharia faculty, said, “He asked questions that made it seem that he was not sure of his beliefs.” Despite these flaws in the prosecution’s case, the appeals court, while overturning the death penalty, sentenced Kambakhsh to twenty years in prison.
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On September 7, 2009, he was released after serving twenty months when President Karzai granted him amnesty.
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In November 2007, Ghaus Zalmai, formerly an outspoken journalist, who was then a spokesman for the Attorney General, was arrested for publishing a Dari translation of the Qur’an. The translation had been made by U.S. resident Qudratullah Bakhtiarinejad and edited by Mullah Qari Mushtqaq; 6,000 copies were printed and ready for distribution. The text, titled “A Fluent Translation of the Holy Koran,” differed from earlier translations in that it was entirely in Dari, that each verse was not accompanied by its Arabic equivalent, and that it was a literal line-by-line translation.

This publication led to protests and an emergency debate in Parliament that denounced the book and called for its confiscation. Niamatullah Shahrani, Minister for the Hajj and Religious Affairs, warned, “This book…is a conspiracy by international Zionism and other groups which is designed to eliminate Islam.” Chief Justice Abdul Salam Azimi said, “This is a plot against the religion of Islam.” Zalmai’s employer, the Attorney General, issued a warrant for Zalmai’s arrest, and police captured him at the Pakistani border as he attempted to flee. The translation’s editor, Mullah Mushtaq Ahmad, went into hiding. A Supreme Court representative said that Zalmai’s punishment would depend on exactly how problematic an investigatory commission found the translation to be.”
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Dr. Sher Ali Zarifi, chair of the investigating commission, stated that “the contents of this book show that its writers and editors are members of a religious pluralism movement in the West.” He cited what he regarded as significant deviations in the translation, including the omission of any direct statement on the punishment for certain sins (e.g., stoning for adultery). Zarifi also criticized one chapter that seemingly called on Muslims to examine the holy texts of other faiths as well as the Qur’an and another that permitted them to question some verses of their own sacred book.

Zarifi made these remarks at the November 25 Afghan Academy of Sciences conference, “Scientific Investigation into the Causes and Facets of the Conspiracy to Alter the Koran.” While participants overwhelmingly saw the translation as the product of an assault on Islam, some at least disagreed with Zarifi’s harsh condemnation of Zalmai. The academy’s Mohammad Hassan Tawhidi, for instance, noted, “It is not a great sin if you make some mistakes in a literal translation
of the Koran. It is impossible, I think, to translate the Holy Book the way it is supposed to be.” He also argued that the supposedly omitted directive to stone adulterers was not part of the Qur’an but was developed on the basis of hadiths.
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On September 12, 2008, Zalmai and Mushtqaq were each sentenced to twenty years in prison. Two of Zalmai’s brothers, who had been arrested on charges of trying to help him flee, were freed after spending seven and a half months in jail.
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In March of 2009, an appeals court upheld the convictions. Chief Judge Abdul Salam Qazizada believed that the two were in fact guilty of modifying the Qur’an—a crime that can be punishable by death. Abdul Qawi Afzeli, Zalami’s lawyer, plans to appeal and take the case to the Supreme Court.
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On January 10, 2009,
Payman Daily
, a small paper in Kabul, printed an article that apparently questioned the validity of religions associated with divine revelation. This was considered blasphemous by the Ulema Council and the Government Media Discipline Commission, and, despite a formal apology, the editor, Nazari Paryani, was arrested along with members of his staff. The paper was subsequently closed. A former editor, Razaq Mamoon, insisted that the offending article had previously been published on an Afghan website and had been mistakenly reprinted instead of another article with a similar name.
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Paryani was held for nine days and received death threats after his release. There has been controversy as to the legality of his detention. Din Mohammad Mobarez Rashidi, a representative of the Minister for Information and Culture, criticized the collective arrest of the
Payman
reporters and said the matter should have been referred to his ministry’s Media Violations and Complaints Assessment Commission. Afghan National Journalists Union (ANJU) spokesman Fahim Dashti acknowledged that the article was illegal but said that, since an immediate apology was offered, Paryani’s detention was unwarranted. While it is encouraging that the Afghan government has been openly criticized in this case, the criticism has largely centered not on freedom of press but rather on the premise that the article was published “mistakenly.”
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In the time since the fall of the Taliban government and following the adoption of the 2004 constitution, Afghanistan has quickly established, or reestablished, itself as one of the world’s worst places to discuss competing views of Islam.
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Students, human rights activists, journalists, editors, poets, and translators have been arrested, charged, tried, and imprisoned on vague charges of blasphemy,
apostasy, and insulting Islam that have no foundation in statute. Their offenses are simply declared by religious scholars, and the accused can be subject to short “trials” with no counsel, before judges who may have already decided their guilt. Afghanistan has said that its regime and law are Islamic. But if Islam cannot be discussed, much of the country’s law and politics have been placed beyond discussion and, therefore, beyond reform.

On January 15, 2007, the Moroccan magazine
Nichane
published the article “Jokes: How Moroccans Make Fun of Religion, Sex and Politics,” which poked fun at Islam, Muhammad, and the late king of Morocco, Hassan II. Driss Ksikes, the magazine’s editor, and Sanaa al-Aji, the author, were put on trial for “damaging the Islamic religion, lacking proper respect for the king, and publishing writings contrary to public morals.” The prosecutor asked for five-year prison sentences, closure of the magazine, and a permanent ban on their work as journalists. They were given three-year suspended sentences, banned from working for two months, and each fined $8,000 for blasphemy. The magazine itself was banned for two months
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In April 2007, three Turkish Christians at the Zirve publishing house in Malatya were murdered. Among the victims were two converts from Islam, Necati Aydi, who had converted after a chance meeting with a Christian Turkish woman whom he eventually married, and Ugur Yuksin. The third victim, Tilmann Geske, was a German living in Malatya with his wife and three children. The victims were tortured before their throats were slit. Five suspects reportedly claimed to have been acting to foil a plot to undermine Islam and divide Turkey. Identical notes found inside each of the victims’ pockets read, “We did this for our country. They are attacking our religion.” Defense attorneys claimed that the victims had engaged in inappropriate evangelistic activity and that the suspects were therefore acting in defense of the nation, as such activity would allegedly undermine Turkey’s secular state
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As the trial progressed, there were ongoing plausible allegations that the murders, as well as the 2006 assassination of Catholic priest Andrea Santoro and the 2007 slaying of Hrant Dink, are tied to the activities of the shadowy ultranationalist group Ergenekon, which has also been alleged to be involved in plotting a coup
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In preceding chapters, we have surveyed apostasy and blasphemy restrictions in some of the greater Middle East’s most religiously repressive states. We have also focused on Egypt, a country often regarded as moderate or secular, but in which
religious controls and religiously motivated abuses are pervasive. Similar circumstances can be found in various forms elsewhere in the region, occurring in such countries as Algeria, Jordan, Libya, Morocco, Turkey, and Yemen, although in these countries there are usually fewer examples of religious repression. As in other settings, the major problems faced by apostates are in personal status law, wherein they can, in some cases, become legally nonexistent.

These countries have their own particularities. The Jordanian and Moroccan monarchies are comparatively less religiously repressive than many of their neighbors. Algeria is a relatively secular country whose government wants to maintain order after suffering a brutal civil war with an Islamist insurgency, and it so seeks to repress anything that might lead to social and religious tension. In Yemen, the competing power centers, tribal structures, religious divisions, and insurgencies combine to make life very difficult for those who do not conform to the religious majority’s traditions; at times, even those who do conform to the country’s religious norms suffer abuse.

Turkey is perhaps the most idiosyncratic country in its treatment of blasphemy-related matters. Apart from recently increased vigilante attacks on Christians, it also has some religiously based repression of non-Muslims, different Muslims, novelists, journalists, and reformers, not only by Islamist elements, but also by nationalists. These abusers are often secular but regard Sunni Islam as an integral part of “Turkishness” and practice repression in the name of nationalism.

After a bloody war, Algeria declared its independence from France in 1962. The 1963 constitution has been revised numerous times and is based on an amalgam of French and Islamic legal precepts. A military coup overthrew the country’s first president in 1965, and the military has continued to dominate politics. Of Algeria’s current total population of about thirty-three million, 99 percent are Sunni Muslim, and Islam is the state religion. In 1992, Algeria entered a state of emergency when the military intervened to prevent the likely electoral victory of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS). Radical Islamic terror groups responded violently, carrying out massive, often random, and brutal killings of civilians. Many victims were non-Muslims or those opposed to Islamism.

Today, radical Islamic groups have less support among the general public, and they face close scrutiny by the government for possible security-related offenses. Nevertheless, while the government claims to protect the fundamental liberties of its citizens, many Muslim reformers and writers and non-Muslims continue to face persecution for their beliefs. Under the 2001 revised penal code, Algerians can be imprisoned for up to twelve months for offending the president and up to five years for offending Islam. The new code also makes the act of offending other religions punishable for up to three years.
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