Afghan editor arrested for alleged blasphemy, Islamic World News, NewAgeIslam.com

Islamic World News

Afghan editor arrested for alleged blasphemy

KABUL (AFP) — An Afghan news editor has been arrested for a publishing a newspaper article rejecting that religions, including Islam, were passed to humans through divine revelations, an official said Wednesday.

The news editor of a small Kabul newspaper, Payman Daily, was picked up Tuesday, days after the allegedly blasphemous article was printed, the deputy attorney general, Fazel Ahmad Faqiryar, told AFP.

"He was arrested for publishing an article in which he has rejected revelation. This is an insult to Islam and the rest of the religions," Faqiryar said.

The journalist, whom Faqiryar would not name, was being investigated. If found guilty under Afghanistan's law, which is based on Islamic Sharia law, he could face a sentence ranging from a reprimand to the death penalty, the official said.

The journalist was arrested after a council of Islamic clerics and a government media disciplinary commission found that the article was "an insult to Islam," the official said.

The paper had earlier apologised for publishing the article.

Razaq Mamoon, a former editor-in-chief, told AFP that the article had been taken from an Afghan website and was not written by the newspaper's staff.

After the hardline Islamic Taliban regime was ousted in 2001, Afghanistan installed a Western-style democratic system that provides for freedom of speech.

http://newageislam.com/-afghan-editor-arrested-for-alleged-blasphemy----/islamic-world-news/d/1122

WAHHABISM: UNDERSTANDING THE ROOTS AND ROLE MODELS OF ISLAMIC EXTREMISM, The War within Islam, NewAgeIslam.com

The War within Islam

WAHHABISM: UNDERSTANDING THE ROOTS AND ROLE MODELS OF ISLAMIC EXTREMISM

The Wahhabis are especially notorious for reviving the ways of the Khawarij (or Kharijites). They originated in the time of the caliphates of Uthman and Ali, among the closest companions to Prophet Muhammad. They were the earliest group of fanatics who separated themselves from the Muslim community. They arose in opposition to Ali – Prophet Muhammad’s son-in-law – because of his willingness to arbitrate with Mu’awiyah, governor of Damascus at that time, over the issue of the caliphate. The Khawarij, meaning “those who exited,” slung accusations of blasphemy against Ali and Mu’awiyah – and those who followed them – saying that the Qur’an, and not them, had the ultimate authority in the matter. Ibn al-Jawzi, an orthodox Sunni scholar, in his book Talbis Iblis (The Devil’s Deception) under the chapter heading “A Mention of the Devil’s Delusion upon the Kharijites,” says that Dhu’l-Khuwaysira al-Tamimi was the first Kharijite in Islam and that “[h]is fault was to be satisfied with his own view; had he paused he would have realized that there is no view superior to that of Allah’s Messenger…” Furthermore, the orthodox Sunni scholar Imam Abd al-Qahir al-Baghdadi discusses the Kharijite rebellions and their bloody massacres of tens of thousands of Muslims in one of his books. He explicitly mentions the Azariqa, one of the most atrocious Kharijite movements led by Nafi’ ibn al-Azraq from the tribe of Banu Hanifa – the same tribe where the heretic Musaylima the Prevaricator (or Liar) who claimed prophethood alongside Prophet Muhammad came from. Just as the Khawarij threw accusations of blasphemy on Ali and Mu’awiya, Wahhabis throw accusations of blasphemy against Sunnis and Shi’ites.

http://newageislam.com/wahhabism---understanding-the-roots-and-role-models-of-islamic-extremism--/the-war-within-islam/d/938

Blasphemy and persecution By Ishtiaq Ahmed

Those who are familiar with legal expressions and jargon will have no difficulty in understanding that the wordings of the two laws furnish an easy excuse for accusing a person of blasphemy. What can be a matter of at most a spirited discussion on religion and religious icons among educated people can easily be interpreted by illiterates as blasphemy if they discuss religion.