Elham Afroutan who was arrested on 29 January 2006 with six colleagues for the republication of an anonymous satirical piece in a local Iranian publication called Tammadon-e Hormozgan is reportedly in a coma or has died in the custody of the Islamic regime of Iran. She and the others were arrested for a piece entitled “Open fight against AIDS” which compared the advent of Khomeini and AIDS and suggested that president Ahmadinejad could be regarded as the current physical embodiment of the disease. The newspaper’s offices were ransacked and torched and the publication suspended as well.

Sound familiar?

I suppose Islamists and their dim-witted apologists will consider Elham and her colleagues racists, ‘Islamophobes’, insensitives, intolerants, and inciting hatred and violence. That is if they ever manage to utter a word about her and the regime’s innumerable victims.

But we know better.

Clearly, one is not threatened by Islamists for ridiculing Mohammad alone but for ridicuing and opposing any and every one of Islam’s representatives on earth as well as much more. Take a look at the hundred thousand executed by the Islamic regime in Iran for being corrupt, anti-Islamic, infidels, apostates, unchaste… if further convincing is needed.

More importantly though, Elham and her colleagues must be defended by all decent human beings. To do so, visit Amnesty International’s urgent action at http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGMDE130152006?open&of=ENG-IRN.