The Hon. John Howard MP
Prime Minister
Commonwealth of Australia

August 23, 2001


Dear Prime Minister,

I am writing to draw your attention at reports that Dr. Yunis Shaikh, a
homoeopathy doctor in Pakistan has been sentenced to death for blasphemy.

Dr. Shekh did not commit any crime, nor did he defame any one to deserve
this death penalty. He merely uttered the truth that the prophet of Islam
Mohammed was not a Muslim until Islam was revealed to him by Gabriel when he
was 40. I am enclosing a detail newspaper report for your perusal. He has
been given only seven days to file an appeal instead of the usual 30 days.
All newspaper reports suggest that this was a framed up case to settle
certain personal scores.

Any person with the slightest conscience in him/her will be disgusted at
this travesty of justice and barbarism in the name of religion. As a member
of a civilised Australian society we cannot simply let this, inhuman, cruel
and barbaric sentence be carried out. We should use the strongest language
of protest to the Pakistan Government and seek the immediate release of Dr.
Shaikh.

As a private citizen of Australia, I urge you to please use your influence
to save the life of Dr. Yunis Shaikh immediately.

Many thanks for your attention.



Sincerely yours






This article from NYTimes.com has been sent to you by mirza404@....

Please call U. S. Senators to protest! And ask others to as well.

Regards,

Mirza Choudhury
\----------------------------------------------------------/

Pakistani Sentenced to Death for Blasphemy
By CELIA W. DUGGER

RAWALPINDI, Aug. 19 — Dr. Younus Shaikh, a physiology teacher who earned
$89
a month at a small college on the second floor of a shopping plaza in
Pakistan, was convicted there on Saturday and sentenced to death on charges
of blaspheming the Prophet Muhammad.

Dr. Shaikh, who has a week to appeal the decision, is one of hundreds of
people jailed in Islamic Pakistan on blasphemy charges that carry a
mandatory
death sentence, whether the offense was intentional or not. The blasphemy
law
has more typically been applied to religious minorities, but Dr. Shaikh is
the third Muslim convicted.

He was arrested in October after some of his students went to a group of
fundamentalist teachers of Islam to complain that he had been uttering
possibly blasphemous things in class.

The students said he had told them that the Prophet had not become a Muslim
until age 40 and that before then, he had not followed Muslim practices
concerning circumcision or removing his underarm hair. The Movement for the
Finality of the Prophet, well known for pursuing blasphemers, filed a
criminal complaint and sent a mob to the college and the local police
station, threatening to set them on fire.

Dr. Shaikh said in interview earlier this year at the Adiala jail in
Rawalpindi that he had addressed questions in his classroom about whether
Muhammad had been circumcised before receiving God's revelations at 40, and
only remembers saying the Prophet's tribe did not follow that practice.

His family brought their own teachers to court — from a different chapter
of
the same group that brought the charges — to argue that the doctor had not
committed blasphemy because all his remarks dealt with the period before
Muhammad had declared his prophethood.

Pakistan's leaders have acknowledged that the law needs to be revised. The
minister for religious affairs, Mahmood Ghazi, a strong advocate of the law,
has nonetheless said most cases originate from "ill will and personal
prejudice."

Pakistan's military ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, last year suggested a
procedural change that would have required that blasphemy cases be reviewed
by local officials before an arrest. But he quickly backed down when
fundamentalists protested in the streets.

Dr. Shaikh has been championed by the International Humanist and Ethical
Union, a group with which he has been associated. The group issued a
statement today denouncing the intimidating presence of what it called
"murderous and menacing fundamentalist clergy" in the courtroom during Dr.
Shaikh's trial.

"The civilized world should shudder at the news," the statement said, "that
in this century a human being can be tried and eventually be killed by
Pakistan's brutal Islamic State for merely saying that neither Prophet
Muhammad nor his parents could logically have been Muslims before Islam was
revealed to the
Prophet."

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/20/international/asia/20DOCT.html?ex=999329102&




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