Remember all the talk about France banning the burqa and niqab Muslim veils for women a few months ago? That project is now in the parliamentary inquiry phase, a six-month fact-finding mission expected to wind up late this year and produce a draft bill to outlaw them. That’s the way France handled it in 2003 when it wanted to stop Muslim girls from wearing headscarves to state schools. But the process seems more complex this time around. There’s less passion and more hesitation in the debate. A smooth progression from the inquiry to the ban and to its implementation no longer looks assured.

(Photo: Woman in a niqab outside a public library in Ronchin, northern France, 9 Aug 2009/Farid Alouache)

To get a feel for the debate, I dropped by the panel’s latest open hearing late on Tuesday and listened to the arguments being made. Five mayors from suburbs with Muslim minorities were due to speak to the panel, which is led by a Communist deputy named André Gerin who makes no bones about his view that a ban is needed. Mayors like these men play a key role in an issue like this, because they are on the front lines dealing with social change and are taken seriously when they clamour for change. Several are also deputies in the National Assembly - France allows them to occupy multiple offices - so they can easily lobby at the national level for something they want.

Sitting alone at the press table in the committee room, I soon saw why the drive towards a ban seems to be hitting some bumps. The mayors don’t know what they want. All think something has to be done, but most are worried that an outright ban wouldn’t work. Here’s my news story on the session.

This was the fifth of 16 hearings planned by the panel, which is officially called the Mission d’information sur la pratique du port du voile intégral sur le territoire national (Fact-finding mission on the practice of wearing the full veil on national territory). They’ve already heard representatives of women’s right groups, spokespeople of associations defending France’s secular system, a Muslim women’s rights advocate and two Muslim intellectuals and they plan to visit the ethnically mixed suburbs of Paris, Lyon, Lille and Marseille. You can often predict what will be said, but not always - some of the militant secularists turned out to be against a burqa ban because it meant the state interfered with personal choice.

(Photo: A televised session of the panel/National Assembly)

To give you a better feel for the debate, here’s a summary of my notes and quotes from the session:

*Claude Dilain, mayor of Clichy-sous-Bois and chairman of the Association of Mayors of French Cities and Suburbs, said “the veil concerns the issue of women’s dignity and it’s clearly a brake on integration”. Within his association, though, “views (about a ban) are divided. Lots of officials are talking about the risks of passing a law. They’re concerned about political and civic risks.”

“Who’ll be responsible for enforcing this law? There’s a lot of concern about this.” France did not necessarily need a law, he said, but “it’s important that the Republic reasserts its values in a strong symbolic manner … It would be a mistake to look at the full veil just from the religious angle. There are socio-economic causes as well.  People are taking refuge in identities.”

“We’d have lots of difficulty trying to enforce a law on the ground. Now, the police in Clichy-sous-Bois don’t even issue parking tickets in some areas at some times… There has been a strong rise in religious demands. We mayors can’t be left alone with this. This is happening several times a day. You can’t make a strong statement defending the Republic now without being called an Islamophobe.”

*Jean-Pierre Blazy, mayor of Gonesse north of Paris, admitted: “I’m hesitant. I can’t say today that we need a law. But we shouldn’t just dump the problem on the mayors. We need a firm dialogue to make secularism come alive in this country.” He stressed that he supported the 2004 headscarf ban and was concerned about growing religious demands by Muslims for exceptions to the usual municipal services. “If we have a law, we have to have accompanying measures with it,” he said, to make the measure more palatable to Muslims. One measure he suggested was to teach Arabic in state schools.

(Photo: Veiled woman shopping in Roubaix, near Lille, 9 Aug 2009/Farid Alouache)

*Renaud Gauquelin, mayor of Rillieux-La-Pape near Lyon, said there were very few veiled women in his town but growing problems with Muslim demands in pools, hospitals and schools. On veils, he said: “Is this a regression for the rights of women in France? Certainly. Is there a parallel development for men? No.”

“I’m tending towards a law,” he said, noting that laïcité, the legal separation of church and state, was written into the constitution, as were women’s rights, and failing to ban the veil would amount to a failure to defend those rights. “What sign would we give to women around the world? To Iranian women fighting for their freedom? To Saudi women who want to be able to drive a car?”

*Jean-Yves Le Bouillonnec, mayor of Cachan south of Paris, thought existing laws would be enough to deal with the burqa issue. “If we pass a law, how would we enforce it? What would the sanctions be for violating it? There could be no worse message to send than to pass a law and tell people to obey it without saying they will be punished for not obeying it… I can’t see a ban working. It’s extremely complex and almost completely inapplicable.”

He suggested the National Assembly might want to pass a strong resolution reaffirming republican principles.

*Xavier Lemoine, mayor of Montfermeil east of Paris, said some Muslims in his town were becoming “reislamised” and this was visible in a rise in veil wearing and pressure some Muslims put on co-religionists who don’t fast during Ramadan. “It’s not always in the poorer areas, but also in the middle class areas that you see these demands,” he said. He noted that the full veil was not required by the Koran “but it’s in the Sunnah”, France had to take a strong position against the veil and understand how Islam was different from Western traditions. “In Judeo-Christian society, the individual is predominant. In the Muslim world, the individual exists through belonging to a community. The weight of the community is terrible.” At the same time, officials should separate Islam from its fundamentalist fringe when analysing religious issues.

(Photo: Woman in a niqab walks near Eiffel Tower in Paris, 24 June 2009/Gonzalo Fuentes)

Still, he was also hesitant about voting for a ban. “I prefer to do nothing for a good reason than something for a bad reason.”

Several panel members had questions or observations for the invited mayors.

*André Gerin, a Communist deputy, head of the fact-finding panel and former mayor of Venissieux suburb of Lyon, called full veils “medieval customs spread by salafists”. The veil was the I in an Islamisation drive by radical Muslims. Gerin said France should not only consider a ban on full veils but also go after “the gurus” who are not in these neighbourhoods but are spoiling everything”. (BTW Gerin gave no details about who he meant by “gurus”, a term usually used by Hindus and Sikhs. But they call all full veils burqas, using the Afghan term, even though almost all of them worn here are Arab-style niqabs. Go figure.)

*Jean Glavany, a Socialist deputy, said fundamentalism was part of all religions these days. “This idea of separating the fundamentalists from the religion doesn’t work. To say that fundamentalist excesses have nothing to do with the religion is like saying hooliganism has nothing to do with football or doping has nothing to do with the Tour de France.”

“We should refuse to make legislators into exegetists.”

*Jacques Myard, conservative UMP deputy and mayor of Maisons-Lafitte northwest of Paris, warned against turning into a  “soft democracy” that could not stand up for its own values. He argued for a ban with punishments for violators. “Sanctions have to be rehabilitated. Not cutting off of heads and hands, of course.  But this is the order of things in a structured society with its own values. It has to be respected. They can’t impose their personal order.”

“Is Islam compatible with laïcité? That’s not my problem.  It’s not for us to decide if it’s compatible, it’s up to them. In the Muslim world, you find all kinds of interpretations. It’s not our role to solve this.”

Understanding the French approach to its Muslim minority has often proved difficult for outsiders. Does this make it any clearer?

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Photo: Jihad book collection in Jakarta Sept.21, 2009. REUTERS/Supr

A half-century ago, Washington worried about Southeast Asian nations falling like dominoes to an international communist movement backed by Maoist China, and became bogged down in the Vietnam War.

Noordin Top, believed to be the mastermind behind most of the suicide bombings in Indonesia -- including the July 17 attacks on two luxury Jakarta hotels -- pronounced himself to be al Qaeda's franchise in Southeast Asia.

Top and his allies in Jemaah Islamiah (JI) aimed to create an Islamic caliphate across Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, southern Thailand and Southern Philippines. Even before the 9/11 suicide airliner attacks, they were trying to spark an Islamic revolution with ambitious plots and attacks.

Their young foot soldiers dreamed these pro-Western nations (which had banded together to form ASEAN under the U.S. military umbrella at the height of the Vietnam War in 1967) might fall like dominoes to the righteousness of an Islamic jihad. Their martyrdom to the cause would given them a blissful reward in Heaven.

But just as Communism was not the monolith it was feared to be in the 1960s -- China and the Soviet Union had split for one thing -- so too has the Southeast Asian jihadist movement failed to cohere into a singular movement.

Vietnam, it turned out, was fighting what it believed to be a war of national liberation, and was (still is) historically suspicious of China. Al Qaeda's jihad in Southeast Asia has stumbled over similar misconceptions.

JI's former military commander, Indonesian Riduan Isamuddin or "Hambali", tried to pull together various insurgencies in the region under an al Qaeda umbrella before he was captured in Thailand in 2003. He even helped sponsor an "al Qaeda summit" with bin Laden's lieutenants in Kuala Lumpur in 2000.

He failed mostly because the groups had different agendas and a fragmented leadership. The ideology that animates the movements -- Islam -- also prevents it from incorporating as well. The religion does not have hierarchies. People can have different views. The jihadist groups don't do politburos.

Reuters has taken a look at these issues -- including for investors in the region -- in a package of stories. Click on the headlines below to read more about Southeast Asia Islamic insurgencies.

Is economic terrorism a threat to SE Asia?

At the “Values Voter Summit” of conservative Christian activists I attended last week in Washington, more than one participant lamented the “secularization” of America.

That will come as a surprise perhaps to more than one foreign reader of this blog, given America’s famously high rates of religiosity which set it apart from much of the rest of the developed world. And the evangelical tradition which much of the U.S. “religious right” comes from has been fast growing in recent decades.

But Americans who claim no religion are fast growing and Trinity College in Hartford offers a detailed portrait of this group in a new report released this week called “American Nones: The Profile of the No Religion Population.”

“The 1990s was the decade of the “secular boom.” Regarding the percentage of adult Americans who claim no religious affiliation, the researchers found that it had grown from 8.2 percent in 1990 to 14.2 percent in 2001 and to 15 percent in 2008. The growth of the Nones is a national phenomenon. They are the only group that increased in every state and region of the country during the past 18 years,” the report says.

“Who exactly are the Nones? “None” is not a movement, but a label for a diverse group of people who do not identify with any of the myriad of religious options in the American religious marketplace – the irreligious, the unreligious, the anti-religious, and the anti-clerical. Some believe in God; some do not. Some may participate occasionally in religious rituals; others never will. Nones are easily misunderstood. On the one hand, only a small minority are atheists. On the other hand, it is also not correct to describe them as “unchurched” or “unaffiliated” on the assumption that they are mainly theists and religious searchers who are temporarily between congregations. Yet another incorrect assumption is that large proportions of Nones are anti-rationalist proponents of New Age and supernatural ideas,” it says.

The report will no doubt be held up by conservative Christians — a key base for the Republican Party — as further evidence of the country’s cultural slide since the permissive 1960s and the end of school prayer. The neo-atheist movement on the other hand will probably say it attests to their growing popularity (even if outright atheists are only a minority of Nones).

The report is drawn from the massive American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS), which questioned 54,461 adults in either English or Spanish between February and November 2008. Its main findings were released in March.

Here are some highlights of this report:

* The “None” numbers — 34 million American adults — far exceed the combined total of all the non-Christian religious groups in the United States.

* Whereas Nones are presently 15 percent of the total adult U.S. population, 22 percent of Americans aged 18-29 years self-identify as Nones.

* Regarding belief in the divine, most Nones are neither atheists nor theists but rather agnostics and deists (59 percent) and perhaps best described as skeptics.

* The most significant difference between the religious and non-religious populations is a gender gap: Whereas 19 percent of American men are Nones only 12 percent of American women are Nones. The gender ratio among Nones is 60 males for every 40 females.

It is also interesting to note the political affiliation of Nones. Some observers of the U.S. political scene would no doubt regard “secular humanists” — many of whom would be classified as Nones — as a key base for the Democratic Party. Certainly many among the conservative Christian crowd I rubbed shoulders with last week would hold that point of view. But perhaps unsurprisingly the report says when it comes to partisan politics they tend to have an independent cast of mind: “Politically, 21 percent of the nation’s independents are Nones, as are 16 percent of Democrats and eight percent of Republicans. In 1990, 12 percent of independents were Nones, as were 6 percent of Democrats and 6 percent of Republicans.”

(PHOTO: The spire of Memorial Church rises above Harvard Yard at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts September 21, 2009. REUTERS/Brian Snyder (UNITED STATES)

Recent moves in Indonesia, including plans by one province to stone adulterers to death, have raised concerns about the reputation of the world’s most populous Muslin country as a beacon of moderate Islam.

The provincial assembly in the westernmost province of Aceh — at the epicenter of the Indian Ocean tsunami that killed 170,000 people there nearly five years ago — this week decreed the ancient Islamic penalty of stoning to death for adultery.

(Photo: Indonesian Muslim women support sharia, 19 Sept 2006?Supri Supri)

The decision could still be overturned once Aceh’s new parliament is sworn in next month. But many, including Aceh’s governor, the central government in Jakarta, and local businessmen, are concerned about the impact a broadcast public execution by stoning could have on Indonesia’s international reputation.

The Aceh case is one of several showing how hardline Muslim groups are influencing policy in Indonesia. Local governments, given wide latitude to enact laws under Indonesia’s decentralization program, have begun to mandate sharia regulations, including dress codes for women.

One ethnic Chinese Indonesian businessman, a practicing Christian who asked not to be quoted by name, said he feared if the trend continued it could lead to capital flight by the wealthy Chinese, Christian minority. “A lot of regional laws are going in that direction. It’s already alarming the way it’s going. It’s a minority who are doing this, but the problem is that the silent majority just keep silent.”

Read the whole story here.

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If you don’t know anything about the Koran but want to learn, does it make any difference if you’re an American “dummy” or a French “nul”? That  isn’t meant to cast doubts about knowledge on either side of the Atlantic. But it does arise now that the French version of the American guide to Islam’s holy book has just been published in Paris.

The book at right is based on the original text at left, but it would be wrong to call it a translation. First Editions, the French publisher of the “Pour les Nuls” (”For Dummies”) books, took the U.S. original and asked a leading Paris-based Islam specialist, Franco-Algerian Malek Chebel, to adapt it for French readers.

Chebel, who has also just published his own translation of the Koran and an accompanying “encyclopedic dictionary,” explained at the book presentation here that he had to make several changes. The original text by Sohaib Sultan, now the Muslim chaplain at Princeton University, was fine for U.S. readers, he said. “There weren’t errors,” he explained, “but I had to make some fundamental changes. I told the editor, she checked with the American publishers and asked if they agreed. They went along with it. So I worked from that basis and the book became a French book.”

“Le Coran pour les Nuls” keeps large parts of the original “Dummies” text but has new sections on the Koran’s message. “I added implications of the Koran for today,” Chebel said. “What does the Koran say today? How can a Koranic verse be interpreted on the veil, on society, etc? I updated aspects of critical interpretation and rearranged some sequences of chapters.”

(Photo: Malek Chebel, 9 Sept 2009/Tom Heneghan)

“The Koran for Dummies” had a full chapter on jihad with subtitles like “Understanding Martydom” and “Looking at Jihad in Today’s World.” Chebel cut it out of the French version. He does discuss the concept and deplores suicide bombers, but does not highlight it. “I judged there was no place to discuss geopolitics, especially controversial issues, in a book on Islam,” he said.

Chebel has experience with rejigging such texts, having already adapted the “Islam for Dummies” book. He did even more radical surgery on that one. “In ‘Islam for Dummies,’ there was no Islam in France or Islam in Europe. ‘Islam for Dummies’ was Islam of Americans for Americans,” he said. “But France is the largest ‘Muslim country’ in the West. That wasn’t an error but something was missing.”

In the end, about half of the Koran book was changed in one way or another, said Vincent Barbare, head of First Editions. This isn’t always the case for the “Pour les Nuls” series. “There are some American books we don’t adapt but we write our own, not because the American book is bad but because the reality in America is not the same as ours,” he said.

(Images: Chebel’s new Koran translation and “encyclopedic dictionary)

“Take a dumb example,” Barbare said. “Last year we published Les Annees 60 pour les Nuls (The Sixties for Dummies). The American book is very very good, but it talks mostly about Vietnam and Kennedy, and not about the May ‘68 student protests in Paris or about General de Gaulle… On Islam, there was a lot that was in common. Malek read and found it was not disconnected from what we wanted to do.”

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(Photo:KAUST under construction near Jeddah, 19 Oct 2008/Asma Alsharif)

Saudi Arabia is launching its first co-educational high-tech university, but unless clerical influence is removed the state education system will not move into the modern age, analysts say.  King Abdullah has invited heads of state, business leaders and Nobel laureates next week to the opening of a technology university which has attracted top scientists and is meant to produce Saudi scientists and engineers.

The King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) is the first institute in one of the world’s biggest oil exporters that is outside the reach of the education ministry, where clerics opposing cutting religious content have a strong say. Men and women will be able to mingle, a stark contrast to otherwise strict gender segregation in the Islamic kingdom.

Despite its immense financial resources, the parameters of Saudi school and university education are governed by religious strictures and many subjects are off-limits for women to study.

While KAUST enjoys almost unlimited funds, sophisticated equipment and is run by an independent board, most Saudi schools and universities have curriculums still dominated by religion, despite reform efforts begun after the September 11 attacks of 2001.

Read the whole story here.

See also Saudi Comedy Enters the Debate Over Education Reform.

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U.S. author Robert Wright traces the history of God and suggests that it might all point to the unfolding of something divine, though perhaps not in the sense that most people of faith would envision.

In his just published “The Evolution of God,” Wright takes his readers on a thought-provoking journey through the spiritual beliefs of our hunter-gatherer ancestors to the development of the three Abrahamic faiths: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. You can see my interview with Wright here.

Wright’s engaging book covers a lot of ground and it certainly raises many questions that may be of interest to readers of this blog. I’m just going to throw a few of them out here — trust me, there could be many, many more.

1. RELIGION AND SCIENCE:

Has religion in the past given rise to science? The Polynesians that Captain James Cook encountered in the 18th century tried to predict the weather by looking at the night sky – and often succeeded. They believed this was divinely inspired  but as Wright notes:

“The apparent explanation is that both the night sky and the prevailing winds change seasonally. So there was indeed a correlation between stars and weather; the Polynesians just had the wrong explanation … Still, this is the way scientific progress often starts: finding a correlation between two variables and positing a plausible if false explanation. In this sense, ’science’ dates back to preliterate times.”

2.  MONOTHEISM AND INTOLERANCE/TOLERANCE

Wright argues that “scriptural interpretaion is obedient to facts on the ground” and that “… monotheism turns out to be, morally speaking, a very malleable thing, something that, when circumstances are auspicious, can be a fount of tolerance and compassion.”

3. A PURPOSE-DRIVEN HISTORY?

Acadamic history in the West has, for the most part, long since abandoned the view that the march of history is also the march of progress. But Wright raises the possibility that the unfolding drama of human history has been one of moral progress and that this might — just might — point to divine guidance.

“What might qualify as evidence of a larger purpose at work in the world? For one thing, a moral direction in history. If history naturally carries human consciousness toward moral enlightenment, however slowly and fitfully, that would be evidence that there’s some point to it all,” he writes.

Wright is well aware that many people will take issue with this thesis, especially in light of the horrors of the 20th century. Critics could also point to the rocky start of the 21st century with the Sept 11 attacks, the war in Congo, the depths of corporate greed … well, the list could be almost endless. In Wright’s America, secular humanists on the left have decried Wall Street’s behavior and almost all of the policies of the past administration of President George W. Bush; religious conservatives have seen almost nothing but moral decline since the 1950s and 1960s.

But as Wright told me:  “I think the fact that we have such a dim view of the 20th century is itself a sign of our moral progress.”

There is much more to this book including a history of God — or one might say the changing or conflicting image of God in the human mind — that is ground in material conditions, culture and politics. Much of it involves an on-going discussion on growth of “non-zero-sum” relationships in the world and the notion of “moral imagination” or “our capacity to put ourselves in the shoes of another person” as Wright describes it.

But what do you think? Are there signs that humanity has made moral progress and could it be a sign of something divine?

(Author Photo by Barry Munger)

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The percentage of Americans who believe Islam encourages violence has declined and very basic knowledge about the faith has shown modest increases, according to a new survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. Thirty-eight percent of those polled believed Islam was more likely than other faiths to encourage violence, down from the 45 percent who held this view two years earlier.

Most Americans — 58 percent – also believe Muslims are discriminated against. In fact, they see them as a group second only to gays and lesbians in terms of the discrimination they face. These findings suggest unexpected empathy for a community whose leaders often claim they are regarded with suspicion and hostility.

The survey also reports that Americans are generally learning more about Islam and that increasing familiarity with the religion correlates with a decline in belief that Islam promotes violence.

The poll’s findings, released ahead of the eighth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, come against the backdrop of President Barack Obama’s attempts to reach out to the Islamic world and eroding public support for the war in Muslim Afghanistan as U.S. combat deaths there rise to record levels.

You can see a link to the survey here and you can see our report here.

(Photo: Minaret of Zurich’s Mahmud Mosque, 23 May 2007/Christian Hartmann)

The Swiss Council of Religions, which is composed of leaders from the country’s Christian, Jewish and Islamic organisations, has issued a statement rejecting a proposed ban on minarets. A group of right-wing anti-immigrant politicians has gathered more than 100,000 signatures to support the so-called Minaret Initiative, saying the minarets threaten law and order. The vote is due on November 29.

The Swiss federal government has warned that the referendum vote was organised legally but a ban would violate international human rights and the country’s constitution. “Such a ban would endanger peace between religions and would not help to prevent the spread of fundamentalist Islamic beliefs,” its Department of Justice and Police said in late August.

The Council statement, the first it has made on a political issue since it was formed in 2006 to foster interfaith dialogue, denounces the bid as an affront to the tradition of diversity in the multilingual Alpine country. Here are some excerpts from the statement:

“The Swiss Council of Religions decisively rejects the Minaret Initiative. The Council, which consists of leaders from the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim communities, is dedicated to protecting religious peace in Switzerland and to strengthening trust among the churches and religious communities. The Minaret Initiative would bring about just the opposite. It instrumentalizes religion for political aims and engenders mistrust among the populace…

“Switzerland has known cultural diversity for a long time. It is part of its history and characteristic of the Swiss identity. The people of this country have developed rules and systems of coexistence in the course of a long common history. The resulting rules are such an integral part of the cultural tradition of the country that its people are hardly aware of them in explicit terms; and at the center of this democratic self-image lies in the recognition of the freedom of each individual within the framework of a legal order that is equally binding for all…”

(Photo: Steeple and minaret in Wangen bei Olten, 7 August 2009/Michael Buholzer)

“The dialogue among the churches and religious communities of Switzerland shows that differences of religion, culture, tradition, and social-political views do not preclude a deep common belief that all people share the same inalienable dignity. The fundamental rights to the freedom of belief and conscience apply equally to all. The right to construct mosques and minarets can therefore not be made to depend on whether religious minorities enjoy the same religious freedoms in other countries. Answering injustice with further injustice would be a betrayal of Swiss values…

“The minaret initiative does not solve any problems. On the contrary, it only contributes to suspicion, mistrust, and aggression against people of Muslim faith…

“The signatures gathered for the referendum initiative lend expression to the people’s fears and concerns. What messages will be preached in the mosques? Is Islam more than just a religion? What significance do human rights, democracy and rule of law, and the equality of men and women have from a Muslim point of view? Does Islam seek the status of an exception in Switzerland due to its religious precepts? These questions and others like them will be asked and require discussion…”

Swissinfo.ch has an interesting interview with Council Secretary Markus Sahli that starts right off with the question — what does this interpretation of religious freedom mean for the debate over women wearing Muslim headscarves?  “The headscarf issue is a difficult one. The Council has come to the conviction that one cannot give an overall answer to this question. One must respond to it case by case…”

According to the Basler Zeitung, the Swiss government is concerned that the November 29 referendum could spark protests in the Muslim world and is preparing an information campaign to explain it abroad. The issue has not aroused much interest in Muslim countries so far, it says, so there are no plans now to start an information campaign that might only draw attention to the issue.

(Photo: Istanbul protest against Swiss publication of Prophet Mohammad cartoons, 10 Feb 2006/Ahmet Ada)

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An Afghan journalist, sentenced to death for blasphemy, reduced to 20 years’ jail on appeal, has been set free and is living in exile in an undisclosed country, a media watchdog has said.  Perwiz Kambakhsh, 24, a reporter with the Afghan Jahan-e Now daily, was sentenced to death in January 2008 by a court in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif.

(Photo: Kambakhsh at a Kabul court hearing, 21 Oct 2008/Omar Sobhani)

Kambakhsh was arrested and imprisoned for downloading and distributing an Iranian article from the Internet that said the Prophet Mohammad had ignored the rights of women. Under Islamic law — stipulated in Afghanistan’s constitution — blasphemy is punishable by death.

In a statement on its website, Paris-based Reporters Without Borders, which campaigns for press freedom, said Kambakhsh’s lawyer had confirmed to them Monday his release and that President Hamid Karzai had signed a pardon several weeks earlier. Karzai’s office was not immediately available for comment.

The arrest and sentencing of Kambakhsh drew criticism from a number of Western nations, the Afghan media and rights groups. FaithWorld has followed this story closely from his death sentence in January 2008, the October 2008 appeals verdict of 20 years in jail and appeals to President Hamid Karzai last March to pardon him.

Read the whole story here.

Here is an interview with Kambakhsh that Reporters without Borders recorded in a Kabul detention centre in February 2009: