Free Republic

TEHRAN — Gunmen shot dead a prominent Iranian cleric on Thursday in the northwest province of Kurdistan, the official IRNA news agency reported, in the latest attack to shake the region. Mullah Mohammed Sheikh Olislam, who represents the province in Iran's top clerical body the Assembly of Experts, was shot twice in the head by unknown attackers at a mosque in Sanandaj, Kurdistan's main city.

Libyan Liberal Muhammad Al-Houni on Statements by Archbishop of Canterbury: If Europe Adopts Shari'a, It Will Revert to Pre-Enlightenment Era In a February 26, 2008 article in the Arab liberal e-journal Elaph, Libyan-European liberal thinker and entrepreneur Muhammad 'Abd Al-Muttalib Al-Houni wrote that the recent statements by Archbishop of Canterbury Dr. Rowan Williams on implementing shari'a law in Britain constituted dangerous encouragement to fundamentalists in their war against the Enlightenment. He added that such statements could have very grave repercussions for the struggle for freedom in Muslim countries as well. The following are excerpts from Al-Houni's article: Would Europe Have...

... In some sense, the outrage about according a degree of official status to Shariah in a Western country should come as no surprise. No legal system has ever had worse press. To many, the word “Shariah” conjures horrors of hands cut off, adulterers stoned and women oppressed. By contrast, who today remembers that the much-loved English common law called for execution as punishment for hundreds of crimes, including theft of any object worth five shillings or more? How many know that until the 18th century, the laws of most European countries authorized torture as an official component of the...