Koran Distributor Arrested in Afghanistan

The BBC reported on Sunday that Mr. Ghows Zalmay, the spokesman for Afghanistan's Attorney General, was arrested. The reason: distributing an allegedly "un-Islamic" version of the Koran:

Religious scholars are outraged at the new edition of the Muslim holy book.

They say that it is un-Islamic, that it misinterprets verses about alcohol, begging, homosexuality and adultery.

They also complain that it does not contain the original version in Arabic as a parallel text for comparison.

Both houses of the Afghan parliament have held emergency debates.

Senators have called for Mr Zalmay and the translator, himself a mullah, to be punished.

One said Mr Zalmay was "worse than Salman Rushdie", whose book, The Satanic Verses, caused widespread outrage in the Islamic world.


At least in ths case, it appears that Afghanistan's democratically elected legislators are more interested in imitating the Taliban than in fighting them.