Afghan Court Upholds Sentence In Koran Translation Case

The publication of a Koran that doesn't include the original Arabic will result in a lengthy prison sentence for two men in Afghanistan. This is just wrong, but this is how Islamic law rolls:

The controversial text is a translation of Islam's holy book into an Afghan language without the original Arabic verses alongside. Muslims regard the Arabic Quran as words given directly by God. A translation is not considered a Quran itself, and it is believed a mistranslation could warp God's word.

A host of Muslim clerics in this conservative Islamic state have condemned the translation - which was published in 2007 and handed out for free - as blasphemous and accused its publishers of setting themselves up as false prophets.

Critics have said the trial illustrates the undue influence of hard-line clerics in Afghanistan's fledgling legal system.

The appeals court found the men guilty of modifying the Quran - a crime punishable by death. However, the three-judge panel reiterated a lower court ruling giving the men 20 years each.

The prosecutor had asked for the death penalty for the two men - Ahmad Ghaws Zalmai, a former spokesman for the attorney general, and Mushtaq Ahmad, a Muslim cleric who signed a letter endorsing the translation.

Chief judge Abdul Salam Qazizada invoked Islamic Shariah law when reading out the sentence, saying death would not have been an extreme punishment.

The death sentence was considered an appropriate treatment for the crime since both men were accused of apostasy and leading other Muslims to consider apostasy.

Here's the thing.

Despite making the Koran more approachable and understandable for the people reading it - those that can read it in a country that has an incredibly high illiteracy rate - it is deemed a crime because the original Arabic was not included (even when most people don't know how to read it or understand it either).

The freedom of speech runs headlong into Islamic law and Islamic law wins again.

These two men are lucky that they didn't get a death sentence.