You educated the girls!?! Sentence? Death!!!

Last week I walked down the street to my local coffee shop. It's a calm place: comfy chairs, soft music, you know, the kind of place where you really get into the back pages of The Times. So sitting there, I overheard two loud, ignorant men debating the tenets of Islam. Oh, the comedy.

Dumbass 1: "They're trying to bring us all under the Sharia. MUSLIM LAW!!!"

Dumbass 2: "Well yeah, we go around the world trying to solve problems and what do we get? Airplanes in our towers!"

Dumbass 1: "No kiddin'. If those damn-nab A-rabs actually read the Koran they would learn that their religion is one of peace. So why the hell are they fighting us?!?"

There were a few things that provoked me from the start. First off, we're already under Muslim law. (Sorry bad joke.)

But really, haven't you heard a conversation like this before? I hear people (by 'people' I mean Yanks) constantly bringing up how we saved the Jews in WWII. And the list of good deeds goes on. But my point here is that many American's seem to be a little fast in judgment vis-à-vis the Muslim world. Or are they?

If you have ever read the Casbah before, you would know that The Rooster, Abu Danger and Abu Guerrilla (me) are all fans of Middle Eastern/Islamic culture. We're fascinated by the mysticism of Islam, the politics of the Orient and the thrill of traveling through it all. (Now that I think of it, is it possible to be a connoisseur of the Orient? Sound off in the comments. By the way, I think The Rooster has a soft spot for Jewish Kabbalah too.)

So now that our love has been professed, my favorite Afghan blog, The Ghosts of Alexander, just put up a post about an Afghan journalist who was sentenced to death. The crime? I can assure the readership that it was hanus beyond belief:

"An online article from Iran that discusses the rights of women in Islam. As part of his plot to destroy Islam he sent copies of it to some of his friends at university. Thanks be to God he was stopped by the brave judiciary of Afghanistan. He was initially sentenced to death before nefarious foreign forces objected."

Honestly guys, take a look at this story. It's rather embarrassing, don’t you think? In modern Afghanistan, where theres cut-your-head-off for whatever Islamic banditos are terrorizing the civilian population… And this is what the Afghan judiciary is focusing on?

Not only is this Islamic fundamentalism "a foreign growth on Afghan culture," but it is not helping the ignorant folk at my local coffee shop. Come'on Afghan Judiciary, we're all rootin' for you, but you cannot behead a young Pashtun for citing the Koranic rights of women, that is simply barbaric.