Are our soldiers fighting to uphold,

is our aid money going to preserve the right of Afghan courts to pull this kind of shit? A journalist has downloaded material deemed to be blasphemous to Islam, and he has been sentenced to death. He has a couple more courts to be dragged through before this sentence is confirmed.

I would be interested to know if the court opened with prayers that invoked a god and included the phrase ‘the merciful’. The Afghan Embassy in London Contact Page welcomes feedback and encourages recommendations, suggestions and complaints.

I’ve emailed my MP and asked him to give the Foreign Office a good poke to make representations about Mr Kambakhsh (I don’t hold out any hope though, our Foreign Secretary is a bit of a turnip).  Possibly I don’t understand and Mr Kambakhsh will be let off with a small fine and told to pick up some litter. If not, Allah must be a very insecure deity if the transmission of a load of 1s and 0s over a telephone line makes his foundations wobbly and mandates the execution of a young journalist. Pillocks.

PZ Myers at Pharyngula handles the matter with customary aplomb.