Afghanistan: Woman stoned to death!

Amina (her full name is not known) was killed on 21 April 2005 in Afghanistan's Urgu district in Badakhan province. She was dragged by policemen out of her parents' house and killed publicly and officially in execution of a death sentence passed by a local court. The killing was committed in the traditional and extremely gruesome way, Islam has in store for women accused of adultery: she was stoned to death.

Under the Taliban, killing by stoning was a regular practice. The victim was fastened, bundled in a gunnibag and digged into the earth up to her waist. Then the frantic crowd - shouting "Allah is great!" and howling in excitement - would throw stones on her from behind a drawn circle. The stones of the size of a hand, sometimes bigger, would hit the victim from all sides, smash her head and her face. Blood would ooze out of the cover, the human bundle would jerk in pain and agony till she was finally hit to death. There are no records available, but it is estimated that hundreds of women have been stoned to death under the reign of the Taliban, which ended in late 2001.

Under the post-Taliban government, ruling by the grace of the USA, human rights continue to be grossly violated. Though the criminal justice system of the country has been officially overhauled, women accused of adultery are still punishable with death and sometimes even killed the barbarian Taliban way. In the case of Amina, the local authorities well considered that the new rules did not allow a victim to be stoned to death by the crowd. They still deemed it fit, however, that she was stoned to death by her husband, and proceeded accordingly.

Less than 48 hours after the verdict, 29 year-old Amina was already dead. First international reports appeared several days later. There was no chance to try and excert pressure on the government to honour signed Human Rights agreements and interfere to Amina's rescue. The man, with whom she allegedly committed adultery, was whipped a hundred times and set free. Local contact people of the Human Rights Commission of Afghanistan suspect that the adultery case was fabricated in order to kill Amina, after she demanded divorce from her husband. A local Taliban leader, the husband fled to Iran as soon as the war begun and had just returned home after nearly five years.

According to Amnesty International (AI), Amina's was the first execution by stoning after the end of the Taliban rule. Local witnesses, however, say that in Urgu district itself at least one more woman has been stoned to death since Hamid Karzai is President of Afghanistan.

Europe fails to protect immigrant Muslim women's human rights

Aayan Hirsi Ali, Azam Kamguian and Taslima Nasreen spoke in the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva

In a special session of the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva last month, women in Muslim immigrant communities in Europe found powerful advocates for their rights. Somalia-born Dutch parliament member Aayan Hirsi Ali, exiled Iranian Human Rights activist Azam Kamguian and Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen, who is an Honorary Associate of Rationalist International, spoke to the 53-member Human Rights Commission. While Europe pays lip service to universal human rights, they accused, European governments fail to protect Muslim women in their countries from severe Human Rights abuses under the pretext of respect for cultural diversity. Multi-culturalism is a kind of upside-down racism, said Azam Kamguian.

Aayan Hirsi Ali

Muslim women in European countries "are beaten, they are forced to marry, they are genitally mutilated, they are taken by their parents to their country of origin and kept there against their wills. Sometimes they are even killed," said Aayan Hirsi Ali in her speech. "Liberal democratic governments are not interfering because they argue that that's their culture," she said.

She expressed condemnation for "the moral relativism in Europe whereby women from Third World countries do not enjoy the same freedom and protection as native European women enjoy." European countries have to accept that women are more threatened within Muslim communities than in their wider secular societies. Governments must take measures to protect these vulnerable women, even if such action is deemed culturally insensitive to the Islamic community or leads to accusations of anti-Muslim bias, Hirsi Ali said.

European governments are buying "a one-way ticket to the Middle Ages", if they continue to turn a blind eye to Islam's hostility toward women, homosexuality and Jews, she warned.

Aayan Hirsi Ali, who fled to the Netherlands in 1972 to escape a forced marriage in Somalia, worked as an interpreter for asylum seekers and became a champion for Muslim immigrant women's rights in Europe. In November 2004, she was threatened by Islamic extremists, allegedly behind the murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh, and had to go into hiding. She is the author of the script for Van Gogh's movie Submission, a powerful accusation against the treatment of women under Islam, which provoked the wrath of fundamentalists.

"We shall do our best to advance his failure"

Sanal Edamaruku in an interview with Radio BBC about the new Pope

(21 April 2005)

"We don't expect any change. The Pope has been the doctrinal adviser and enforcer of his predecessor for 23 out of 26 years. He will continue to scourge humanity with inhumane concepts of sexuality, birth control, abortion and euthanasia. He will continue to try and cripple the critical faculties of generation after generation and to bludgeon down their self-respect and free will. He will fight for submission and irrationalism against the spreading triumph of rationalism. That is his mission. He is the Pope. We shall do our best to advance his failure."

Pakistan: Fatwa-mob kills "blasphemer"

In the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), a villager has been chased and killed by an agitated mob, after a local cleric of the ruling Islamic fundamentalist alliance Muttahida-Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) issued a fatwa against him, announcing his death for "desecrating" the Quran.

The victim, Aasheq Nabi from Spin Khak village in Nowshera district (ca.30 km from Peshawar) was accused of burning a copy of the Quran. His uncle Janab Shah and other family members - in order to "settle" property arguments, sources said - registered a blasphemy case against him. Police raided his house, but could allegedly not arrest the man in his 40s, as he was hiding. The henchmen of the local cleric, however, found him. Not willing to rely on legal proceedings, they resorted to lynch law. Leading a 400-strong mob, they chased him over the fields and shot him down from a tree, which he had climbed in despair. He begged for his life, but was brutally killed.

Police did not make any arrest. According to their claims they were not even in a position to identify the local cleric responsible for the murder.

Pakistan's blasphemy laws are a handy tool for the self-styled guardians of Islam to enforce total submission under their rule.. Even though in most cases (mis-)used to settle issues without any religious connection, they are always oiling the engines of the religious establishment. In a modest effort to curb the abuse of the blasphemy laws, the National Assembly of Pakistan passed a bill in November 2004 - against the votes of the MMA - demanding that nobody can be arrested and accused of blasphemy, before a senior police officer has investigated the case for substance. The amendment will come into effect, if and when the Senate will pass the bill [see Bulletin 135].

Pakistan: Islamic passports are back

Religion is back in Pakistani passports. Yielding to pressure of Islamic fundamentalists, the government has revised its decision to bring the format of the national passport in line with the global standards for travel documents, which do not include information about the holder's religion. After only three months, there are Islamic and un-Islamic passports again.

In January 2003, Paksitan's National Data Authority "NaDa" had released the new type of machine-readable passport with seven columns, which is meantime used by most countries in the world. Fundamentalists missed the "eighth column" that was revealing the religion of the holder in the old passport. This Islamic addition had been introduced by military ruler General Zia-ul-Haq in 1980, who was responsible for shaping the "Islamic Republic of Pakistan" according to fundamentalist wishes.

With violent protest and the announcement of "million-men-marches" all over the country, Islamic extremists under leadership of the six-party alliance Muttahida-Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) bullied the government into revising the passport change. In a hurry, the NaDa adapted its new software to accommodate the eighth column. And since 28 March 2005, religion is back in Pakistani passports - "on popular demand", as the government says. Prime Minister Shaukat Azis, advised by a five-member ministerial committee, assured that the missing of religion was caused by a deplorable "clerical mistake" of the government of his predecessor. He promised to correct this mistake by stamping the religion of the holder in all the seven-column passports that were issued between January and 28 March.

Since the elections in October 2002, the fundamentalist alliance MMA occupies nearly one forth of the seats in the National Assembly. Their influence on the government, however, is far bigger than their official representation could justify, as they use the violence of rampaging mobs to press their demands. Calling police forces back, the government uses to give them a free hand. They are campaigning for nothing less than a Taliban Pakistan according to the model of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), the traditional hotbed of fundamentalism, in which the MMA swept the elections in 2002. They abolished civil liberties in the NWFP by implementing Shariat (Islamic Law) and establishing a copy of the Taliban's dreaded "Department for the Prevention of Vice and the Promotion of Virtue".

India: "Marxists are no more opposed to religion"

The 18th Kerala state conference of the Communist Party of India -Marxist (CPI-M) may have made Pope John Paul II, who is credited with the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe, smile on his deathbed. CPI-M leaders declared ceremoniously what was later elaborated in an article by state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan in the party daily Deshabimani: "The party is no more opposed to religion. What the party oppose is only their misuse for political ends and heinous communalisation to divide the people."

But what about Karl Marx' famous statement of religion being the "opium of the masses"? That is "quoted out of context by the 'enemies' of the party to propagate that Marxists are anti-religious".

The CPI-M since some years nursed their own local "rationalist" group in Kerala that insisted on class war and the fulfilment of the goals of Dialectical Materialim, the classical Marxist dogma. This was aimed to channelise the good will for the rationalist movement in Kerala into votes in CPI-M's favour. The changed policy of the party, however, was immediately seen in a recent parliament march that the party sponsored group organised at Delhi. It was announced that top communist leaders (including Polit Bureau members) would address the rally and more than 5000 people were expected to participate. It ended, however, a poor show of 203 people with no known communist leader addressing them! Instead saffron wearing swamies and turban wearing Sikhs tried to give leadership to this orphaned group.

The new comradeship of CPI-M with religion aims at extending the party's influence among Muslims and Christians. The CPI-M proudly presents photos of Kerala party leaders including the late chief minister E K Nayanar in an audience with the Pope.

Spain: The true Pope died before his "devilish" competitor in Rome

Pope Gregorio XVII, who was personally coronated by God after the death of Pope Paul VI in 1978, is dead. The pontiff, who headed the Church of El Palma de Troya in southern Spain, which has allegedly more than seventy bishops and followers in Europe, USA and Nigeria, passed away silently in late March within the vast walled complex of the church of El Palma de Troya. Church officials declined to reveal details of his death or comment on the question of his succession.

Pope Gregorio XVII, 58, born as Clemente Dominguez Gomez, was an uncompromising defender of traditional doctrine. He staunchly refused to accept reforms introduced in the Catholic Church during the sixties, such as saying the mass in local languages instead of the traditional Latin or indulging in theological dialogue with other branches of Christianity. He considered his competitor in Rome a representative of the Devil.

There have been many "antipopes" throughout the history of the Catholic Church, some of them strong contenders for the Vatican office after controversial elections, some leaders of small Catholic break-away groups. Besides Gregorio XVII, the 20th and 21st century knows at least seven other antipopes in Canada, USA and Italy.