A Young Life Hangs in the Balance in Afghanistan's Cultural War
Death Ordered for Challenging Islam

By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, February 15, 2008

KABUL -- While trolling the Internet last October, Afghan journalism student Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh came across some articles that questioned the limits of women's rights under Islam. According to Afghan prosecutors, he downloaded the articles and circulated them on campus.

In the West, it would have been an innocent act. In Afghanistan, it has just earned him a death sentence.

Now inside a provincial Afghan prison cell, Kambakhsh, 23, sits at the center of a cultural war between two powerful forces that have clashed repeatedly in the six years since the Taliban's extreme Islamic rule ended in Afghanistan.

One is the sway of conservative Islamic leadership and entrenched values that traditionally have dictated every aspect of Afghan religious life. The other is the fast-growing, Internet-driven influence of Western ideas that encourage young Afghan students and professionals to challenge everything, even their faith.

As many older, devout Afghans view it, Kambakhsh committed an unforgivable sin against Islam by circulating the articles, one of which questioned why Muslim men can have more than one spouse at a time but women can't. They support the court's harsh ruling, partly as punishment and partly as a deterrent to such behavior and thinking.

"We believe in free speech, but Islam is more important to us than anything. When someone insults our religious traditions, he is not a journalist, he is a traitor," said Enayatullah Balegh, the imam of a large mosque in Kabul, the Afghan capital. Kambakhsh's actions, he said, were tantamount to "insulting 30 million Afghan Muslims. The court has given the right punishment."

As many younger, educated Afghans view it, Kambakhsh was engaging in the kind of intellectual debate that is inevitably entering Afghan society, healthy for its democratic development and legally protected by its constitution. They view the court's action as unjust, cruel and motivated by political pressure to quash investigative journalism.

"If it is illegal to read and write something, then this is not a democracy; it's a dictatorship," said Rahimullah Samander, president of the Afghan Independent Journalists' Association. He said the ruling, handed down last month by a panel of judges in the northern city of Mazar-e Sharif, was symptomatic of an older generation of Afghan religious and militia leaders who view themselves as a bulwark of Islamic tradition. "They want to show they still have power," he said.

Afghan officials and analysts said this week that Kambakhsh is highly unlikely to be put to death. The lower-court decision has already been appealed and could eventually reach the Supreme Court, which is headed by a respected, Western-educated judge. Moreover, the final decision on any execution rests with President Hamid Karzai, who generally opposes the death penalty and has found ways to circumvent it in several previous capital cases.

Aside from the religious issues involved, several irregularities have been discovered in the handling of the case by police and the court. Kambakhsh, who did not have a lawyer or a public trial, was hauled from his cell after court hours and privately informed of his sentence by a panel of judges. It is also unclear whether he apologized to the authorities -- which is grounds for leniency under sharia, or Islamic law -- or was forced to confess to a crime he did not commit.

"There will be several opportunities to review the case very carefully, by very serious experts," said Rashid Rasheed, a spokesman for the Supreme Court. "Sharia law is very broad-minded and forgiving. If this accused gentleman has apologized and he is not stubborn, I am hopeful that things will not go harshly and that this will be seen as a fault rather than a criminal offense."

Nevertheless, the case has provoked a domestic and international firestorm, once again squeezing Karzai's government between the demands of Western democracies -- which helped free Afghanistan from harsh Islamic rule in late 2001 -- and the demands of a largely conservative Muslim society that is deeply resentful of foreign interference and highly sensitive to any slight against its religion.

The Kambakhsh case is only the latest in a series of incidents in which journalists and publishers have come under legal and religious pressure for disseminating material or ideas deemed anti-Islamic. Late last year, a government press aide, Ghaus Zalmai, was arrested and nearly lynched for circulating a translation of the Koran in Afghan Dari that senior religious scholars had not approved. He is still in prison awaiting trial.

This time, deluged with protests from international human rights groups and governments that provide the bulk of aid and security for his country, Karzai has tried to find a diplomatic middle ground. Last week, asked about Kambakhsh during a one-day visit here by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, he carefully promised that "justice will be done, in the right way."

At home, the controversy has brought out competing public demands from organized groups on both sides of the culture war.

An influential council of religious scholars has pressed for Kambakhsh's execution and also for the return of harsh public punishments once carried out by Taliban authorities. Its leaders say that they fear young Afghans will fall prey to the libertine influence of the West and that the international community's aid is not worth the undermining of Islam.

"If Afghanistan is a free country, the foreigners should not interfere. If they support this boy, people will start to hate them," said Balegh, the imam. "We appreciate the help of foreign troops, but if the Americans and the British are coming here and sending their money to use against Islam, we don't want them. Either we have our own laws and traditions or we are an occupied country."

At the same time, newly emboldened civic organizations have held unprecedented street protests defending Kambakhsh in Kabul and Jalalabad, while national press associations appear to have played a careful role in persuading authorities to take a closer look at the case.

Nevertheless, these groups say they feel under increasing threat from the combined forces of conservative religious and armed political groups that still command enormous power, especially in rural provinces where Karzai's government is weak. They assert that the prosecution of Kambakhsh was intended to intimidate his older brother, an established journalist in Mazar-e Sharif who has investigated corruption and abuses by former militia leaders.

"They are putting pressure, they are trying to censor the press. As long as we have such contradictions in our own laws and constitution, it will continue," said Samander, president of the journalists' association. He noted that police searching Kambakhsh's home had confiscated writings on human rights and modern thought, including a classic study of religion by Will Durant. "I have that book here in my office," he said with a wry grimace.