church/state separation — VOICES for REASON

After 20 months in prison on charges of blasphemy, an Afghani journalism student, Sayed Pervez Kambaksh, has been secretly pardoned by President Hamid Karzai and allowed to leave the country for an undisclosed location. For the “crime” of possessing anti-Islamic books, starting un-Islamic debates in class, and downloading and distributing Internet articles saying that the prophet Muhammad ignored women’s rights, Kambaksh had originally been sentenced to death by a council of Islamic mullahs.

Although the pardon is obviously good news for Kambaksh personally, this case is a damning indictment of Afghanistan’s government and of U.S. military intervention there. It was only after an international outcry that Kambaksh’s death sentence was commuted to 20 years. And his release came only because Karzai was desperate to shift the international spotlight away from his government’s unchecked power to dictate religious beliefs and practices. Yet America’s soldiers continue to fight and die for the sake of a nation that is doggedly determined never to let its civil government escape the thrall of the Islamic religion.

Consider just how revolting a spectacle this is.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you’ll be in the Boston area in early July, consider attending the Ayn Rand Institute’s Objectivist summer conference. Voices for Reason writers Tom Bowden, Onkar Ghate and Elan Journo will all be speaking on topics of interest for pro-reason, pro-individual rights advocates. Read the rest of this entry »

President Obama has finally done something good! On Monday, he signed an executive order rescinding the ban on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. The order reverses a policy imposed by President Bush in 2001, forbidding scientists receiving federal research funds from creating and studying new lines of embryonic stem cells.

The Bush ban was driven by religious opposition to this crucial area of medical research, and has been a major obstacle to progress toward cures for diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Bush even used his first presidential veto a few years ago to block Congress from removing his funding restrictions. Obama’s decision defangs this faith-based assault on science.

Now just to be perfectly clear, I am not praising the use of federal tax dollars to fund scientific research. (I think all research should be privately funded.) What I’m praising is the fact that this crucial area of research will no longer be hampered by state-enforced religious dogmas. As Yaron Brook said at the time of the Bush veto:

Read the rest of this entry »

Rejecting a prosecutor’s demand for the death sentence, an Afghan court has sentenced two men to twenty years in jail for blasphemy. Their “crime”? “The men were convicted of modifying the Muslim holy book into Persian while not including the original Arabic text,” said a press report. “There is no law in Afghanistan prohibiting the translation of the Koran but modification is viewed as violating Islamic Shariah law.”

As I’ve said about a previous conviction (for distributing downloads from the internet thought to be critical of the Prophet Muhammad), you must expect such injustices when a nation’s constitution makes it a religious state (in this case, an Islamic republic). When the Bush administration invaded Afghanistan, its goal was not to end the theocratic rule of the Taliban and replace it with a secular government that protects individual rights.  Rather its stated policy was to promote “democracy.” The Bush administration succeeded. The Afghan government reflects the democratic will of the people. The people want to punish blasphemers, and their constitution allows them to do so lawfully.

Read the rest of this entry »

President Obama is getting well-deserved flak from some of his staunchest Democratic supporters for continuing the Bush Administration’s funding for so-called faith-based programs.

This slickly produced White House video conveys Obama’s perspective on the programs. He identifies himself with the “people of faith” and says that his faith-based program is part of a national “mission of love and service” that will allow us to “fulfill our highest purpose as beloved children of God.”

Of all Bush’s benighted, faith-based policies–remember his ban on funding stem cell research, and his frantic attempts to elevate a brain-dead woman named Terri Schiavo to martyr status?–his creation of a White House office to fund religious organizations was one of the most disgraceful. As my colleague Alex Epstein wrote in 2004:

Bush’s justification for Faith-Based Initiatives reveals their actual purpose: “Welfare policy,” he explains, “will not solve the deepest problems of the spirit. . . . No government policy can put hope in people’s hearts or a sense of purpose in people’s lives. That is done when someone, some good soul, puts an arm around a neighbor and says, ‘God loves you, and I love you, and you can count on us both.’” In other words, the government is bankrolling religious organizations because they “help the needy” not only materially but also spiritually–by exposing them to religion.

But exposing people to religion is something the government should absolutely not be doing. Funding of faith-based initiatives is part of a larger faith-based attack on rational government and violates the First Amendment.

Obama should do two things immediately: (1) Announce a halt to all federal funding of religious organizations, and (2) affirm that the United States government is a purely secular agency.