Workers Solidarity Movement

Text of a letter recieved by the WSM from the Workers Communist PartyDear Comrades The Islamic state of Afghanistan has sentenced Ali Mohaqeq Nasab, executive manager of Women's Right journal to two years imprisonment for criticising Islam. This is an outrageous trial, an outright violation of freedom of speech and women's rights.

The people of Afghanistan have been victimized and terrorised by political Islam for over two decades. The fall of the Taliban brought some hope to women and to freedom loving people - that atrocities committed daily by these religious thugs would stop, that people would enjoy freedom and that women could throw down their veils and participate in social life.

This hope was soon shattered by the plans of the US and the West to help bring another Islamic-tribal government into power. The formation of a new Islamic state, with the tribal constitution assembly, was opposed by libertarian and progressive organizations. Objections were dismissed, and atrocities, violation of women s rights, kidnapping and raping of women and young girls, violation of human rights, and basic civil liberties continued.

This sentence must be condemned by all women's rights activists, freedom loving people, humanitarian organisations and secularists. We should fight against political Islam in any corner of the world. We stopped Sharia courts in Canada; we should topple the Islamic states in the Middle East.

Azar Majedi
Chair of Organisation for Women's Liberation