The Institute for War and Peace Reporting has a new article about growing international concerns that the Afghan judiciary is "composed of religious hardliners with Taleban sympathies." The article looks at two convictions that are based on violations of Islamic law and points out that "some have suggested that the cases expose what they see as the creeping Islamicisation of the judiciary." One case concerns a journalist, who was involved in a new translation of the Koran and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. The second case led to a death sentence for a journalism student, who allegedly insulted Islam by downloading and circulating materials from the internet. The documents were supposedly critical of Islam's position on women's rights. The international community is now involved, and appeals have been issued against these convictions. IWPR rightly points out that millions of dollars have "gone into training and reforming the legal sector," but it is questionable just how much progress has been made. President Karzai is in a particularly difficult situation when it comes to issues of "faith and culture," and unfortunately, as Sayed Ibrahimi and Jean MacKenzie write in this article, the courts in Afghanistan are dominated by hardliners, "who believe that their interpretation of Sharia law should trump any guarantees provided in the constitution."
