[FREE IRAN Project] In The Spirit Of Cyrus The Great

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Lafif Lakhdar International Défense Committee

Comité International de Défense de Lafif Lakhdar


LLIDC@HOTMAIL.COM


Attention: Mrs. Louisa Arbour, High Commissioner for Human Rights

Subject: Writer under threat Klafif Lakhdar


Dear Mrs. Arbour,

I would like to thank you for all what you are doing to protect human rights worldwide. And I seize on this opportunity to request your help in defending the prominent Arab secular writer Lafif Lakhdar, currently residing in France, who has been for five decades illuminating generations of Arabs about the way to adapt Islam to modernity, respect of human rights, women and non-Muslims. Mr. Lakhdar was also the main instigator of the letter he co-authored with Arab prominent intellectuals Jawad Hasham and Chaker Nabulsi, and sent to UN sectretary general, calling for the establishment of an international criminal court to prosecute scholars indicted of issuing "Fatwas" (religious edicts) calling for murder.




Mr. Lakhdar was falsely accused of authoring a blasphemous book about the Prophet, following an announcement made by the London-based Islamist site Nahdha.net, on 6 May 2005. This followed the publication by the Sudanese Islamist newspaper "Al Wifaq" of the first and most controversial chapter of the book, which led to street riots calling for the murder of the apostate writer.


The false announcement followed

Our committee is currently campaigning to ensure that the French authorities offer appropriate protection to the writer residing on its soil and that the British authorities take appropriate action against the Nahdaha.net site and its owner Rached Ghannouchi for his incitement to murder. We are also garnering support for the beleaguered author to help him hire a lawyer in order to take his case to a London court.

True, Mr. Ghannouchi withdrew the announcement from the site, following the call that free thinker Lakhdar published on the internet on 13 May 2005, threatening to take his case to British courts. But by that time the announcement was already made public. And any Muslim believing in Ghannouchi's statement may consider it to be his religious duty to murder the writer for blasphemy, as previous experience of the stabbing of Egyptian Nobel Laureate Neguib Mahfoudh clearly proved.
Attached are previous communiques of our Committee and a copy of letters sent from the International Committee to Protect Free Thinkers. And we are ready to provide you with any further information you request.

Looking forward for your response, please accept my best regards.

Abu Khawla, Committee Coordinator,



E-mail: LLIDC@HOTMAIL.COM

Spread the following Petition as much as you can

Help Save Secularists and Put an End to Fatwas

http://www.PetitionOnline.com/23sl82/petition.html


To: Prime Minister Tony Blair

Tunisian writer and free thinker Lafif Lakhdar has his life endangered by a death fatwa issued by the Islamist website "Nahdha.net" , run by a London-based fundamentalist cleric, known by the name of "Rached Ghannouchi".

Lakhdar, an outspoken Secularist and anti-Islamist, has been falsely accused with authoring a book critical of Islam's prophet Mohammed.

He has, at several occasions, stated that he did not write that book. And yet, the fatwa remains in place and he is forced to live accompained by bodyguards.

What has drawn the Islamist's ire is simply the fact that Lakhdar has been and is, since fifty years, an advocate for the secularization and modernization of the Islamic world,demands an end to discrimination against women and non-Muslims and to the death fatwas issued by fanatical Muslims.

He needs everyone's support in order to publicly expose the cleric and bring him to justice in the United Kingdom.

Your all support could make the difference!

Long Live Democracy and Secularism!

Down with obscurantism!

Sincerely,

The Undersigned
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Referendum AFTER Regime Change

"I'm ready to die for you to be able to say your own opinions, even if i strongly disagree with you" (Voltaire)