There is another outrage emerging from the Iraqi legal system this week, targeting a journalist Adel Hussein. Hussien has been sentenced to six months for writing a story on homosexuality and the physical effects of homosexual sex. He was convicted of violating public decency in Sulaimaniyah, Iraq.
His lawyer is arguing that the sentence by a Kurdish court was based on an outdated 1969 Iraqi penal code and that a new law that took effect in October does not recognize a violation of “public custom.”
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Okay folks, I was being sarcastic! Guess I didn’t make it obivous
Democracy has nothing to do with this story. The power of religious
fundamentalism/extremism is the driving force. Many Americans would no doubt smugly refer to this story as an example of what’s wrong with Islam. However, any who doubt the fact that if the “religious” Right gained power in the US they would perpetrate equally absurd rulings. Fully fundamentalist Christian, Jews, Hindus, etc. if given power would use it to suppress any views they deem blasphemous or heretical.
It has happened all too often in the past. The solution is the strict separation of religion from government. This is something
constitutionally guaranteed to us, but throughout our history has been under attack by zealots. The bitter irony is that their zealotry, while disguised as piety, is really driven by ego and/or
a shaky personal faith. Trul pious and religious people are concerned more with the correctness of their own behavior and the Golden Rule, than with trying to regulate their fellow citizens actions. A believer whose faith can be shaken by another persons actions, is not a true believer at all.
Maybe if they became a democratic nation
Mr Bush is being quite vocal these days about his pride of being responsible for making Iraq into just that–a democratic nation. Oops.
Sally said: Maybe if they became a democratic nation, he wouldn’t have been jailed.
Lots of folks have been imprisoned in Democratic countries for stuff they wrote about, right here in this country(USA) in fact.
Maybe if they became a democratic nation, he wouldn’t have been jailed.
He only would have made some people angry and offended them. Then we’d have to hear people like Rosie O’Donnell defend him, along with the ACLU. They’d back him up and who really wants to hear Rosie O’Donnell say anything at all?