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Today I rea an article in Times of India. I would like to share few lines and my thoughts on that...There is a ongoing debate in USA on Barak Obama. Could he, however, be rebranded as the world’s most powerful, and hence vulnerable, apostate. Edward Luttwak, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote recently: “In Islam…there is no such thing as a half-Muslim…As the son of a Muslim father, Obama was born a Muslim under Muslim law. It makes no difference weather his father renounced his religion …(Obama) chose to become a Christian…His conversion, however, was a crime in Muslim eyes; it is ‘irtidad’ or ‘ridda’ (apostasy)…the recommended punishment is beheading at the hands of a cleric.”
The point is sharp; it can only be blunted by an answer.
    In May, the Shariah High Court of the northern Malaysian state of Penang ruled that Siti Fatimah Tan Abdullah, a 39-year-old Chinese cake-seller, could return to her original faith, Buddhism. She had converted in order to marry an Iranian, but argued that she had never become a true believer. The Shariah court accepted her plea and blamed her husband and the religious authorities for
failing to educate Siti.
    The only surprise is that anyone should be surprised. Contrary to the fire-and-sword image that has been constructed, forcible conversion is prohibited in Islam. Even conversion based on an inadequate understanding of the faith is unacceptable, as in the case of Siti. You cannot be a believer if you do not believe, and belief cannot be forced down your throat.
Verse 256 of the second Surah is unambiguous: La iqraha fi al-deen (Let there be no compulsion in religion). Abdullah Yusuf Ali, whose translation of the Quran is recognized across the world, explains, “Compulsion is incompatible with religion because religion is based upon faith and will, and these would be meaningless if induced by force…” A second verse of the Quran reinforces the message: La qum din a qum wal ya-din (Your religion for you and my religion for me).
    It is axiomatic that no new faith can grow without conversion. Equally, every faith discourages the faithful from abandoning their beliefs: this is why there is a persistent demand by some Hindu leaders for a ban on conversions in our country. Verse 106 of Surah 16 promises the “Wrath of Allah” and a “dreadful penalty” upon “anyone who, after accepting faith in Allah, utters unbelief”. But it is vital to note that there is no earthly punishment for apostasy in the Quran. Judgment is left to Allah, the ultimate arbiter. Another verse (2:217) sends apostates to hell, but, as the Encyclopedia of Islam confirms, “In the Quran, the apostate is threatened with punishment in the next world.” In a specific case, the Prophet consoled and welcomed back a Muslim called Ammar, who had, under severe torture, uttered a word that could be construed as recantation.
    There is no Quranic case, therefore, for inflicting any harm upon Obama. His father lived among Muslims even after he had renounced his faith. As a product of Yale in Kenya, his father was hardly an unknown figure. But there is no record of any fatwa ordering the beheading of Obama’s father at the hands of a cleric.
So where is the problem? The problem lies among some — not all — jurists who used one narrative (known as traditions) from accounts of the Prophet’s life in which it is said whoever changes his religion shall be put to death. As Rafiq Zakaria points out (Muhammad and the Quran, Penguin, 1991) this “contradicts the tenor of a mass of other traditions and, therefore, cannot be relied. It also
contradicts the verses in the Quran that speak of freedom of worship”. The faith often has to be rescued from the excesses of the faithful. The overwhelming majority of Muslims will react to a President Obama on the basis of how he manages to take his nation out of the war that George Bush launched across wide swathes of the Muslim world, founded on false assumptions and fuelled by false rhetoric. If Barack Obama finds more comfort in Christianity than Islam, he is more than welcome to his convictions: Your religion for you and my religion for me.

Democracy has 3 pillars
1. Legislature
2. Executive
3. Judiciary
All these are independent of each other and puts a check on each others going beyond its limit.
Executive actions can definately be challenged in court
Laws passed by legislature can also be scrutiniesed by judiciary
but is there any check on judiciary?
Why should we put any check on judiaciry?
The first reason can be because judges are also human and can commit mistakes.
But there are some other reasons also
According to report by Transparency International (TI) called the “Global Corruption Report 2007″
1. 77% believe that the Indian Judiciary is corrupt
2. Money was paid to the officials in the following proportions: 61 percent to lawyers; 29 percent to court officials; 5 percent to middlemen

Further
3. In January 2002, S.P. Bharucha, then India’s chief justice, said that 20 percent of the higher judiciary might be corrupt. In recent years, several upper court judges have been accused of “irregularities”, for instance, in the preferential allotment of valuable land by state governments, and other favours
4. Judicial corruption in India is attributable to a number of factors, including “delays in the disposal of cases, shortage of judges and complex procedures, all of which are exacerbated by a preponderance of new laws”

Inspite of all these
1. the RTI is not applicable to judiciary (As per CJI, TOI 20-4-08)
2.In India, impeachment is not feasible because it requires a huge (two-thirds) majority in Parliament (V. Ramaswamy, a Supreme Court judge, was found culpable by a court committee. But he was politically well-connected and could not be impeached.)

I agree that there are several genuine problems like low ratio of judges per one million population. This is as low as 12 to 13 in India, compared to 107 in the U.S., 75 in Canada and 51 in Britain and there are no easy solutions to the problem of making judges accountable. But some measures can be
tried. One is to appoint judicial ombudsmen from two highly-regarded statutory bodies, the Election Commission and Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India. Nothing prevents the CAG from initiating an independent review of the performance of the judiciary. The CAG could produce highly credible and objective reports and help kickstart a process of promoting transparency and accountability.”

On this fifth anniversary of the American-led Western attack on Iraq, the struggle between the army of occupation and Iraqi guerilla fighters has reached stalemate. Despite the superficial success the Iraqi militias - Sunni or Shia - have not been finally crushed, but remain in being. The Iraqi militias and Al Qaeda terrorists for their part have been giving tough fight to the occupying troops round Basra, where the 4,500 British troops are now confined to a self-imposed internment on the airbase, leaving the city in the hands of local militias. But the situation didn"t stop President Bush from claiming what he described as a "noble" war had been an "undeniable" success. In a remarkable boast that even took Middle East experts by surprise, he said the world was witnessing "the first large-scale Arab uprising against Osama Bin Laden" in Iraq.
If President Bush believes that, then he is in a very small minority.
Even supporters of the war and occupation such as John McCain accept that an early withdrawal of Western forces would plunge Iraq into chaos, as rival militias, Sunni and Shia, fought for power.
The Western forces are, therefore, stuck in the country without hope of early escape - hardly what Bush and Blair expected five years ago.
The so- called Iraqi "government" in Baghdad enjoys little authority outside the Green Zone, while the vaunted democratically-elected Parliament is a useless squabbleshop for rival Sunni, Shia and Kurdish politicians.
Real governance belongs to tribal and militia leaders.
The American military now base their counter-insurgency policy on deals with such local leaders, even paying former enemies to act as agents of law and order. What a farce!
Five years on, it is beyond question that Bush and Blair committed a catastrophic error of judgment in deciding to attack Saddam Hussein"s Iraq.
Not merely catastrophic but positively criminal because we now know for certain that American, British and world opinion was being systematically lied to about the alleged threat from Saddam.
What's more, to launch the war without authorisation by a fresh and specific UN Security Council resolution was a blatant breach of international law.
And five years on, we can count the cost in blood and treasure of Bush and Blair"s criminal folly.
According to the Congressional Budget Office in Washington, the double cost of the occupation of Iraq, plus the even longer occupation of Afghanistan, already amounts to more than $800billion - far more than the bill for the entire Vietnam War.
The military cost to Britain of the Iraq adventure alone in the years 2002-3 to 2006-7 came to nearly £5billion.
What about the human cost of "Operation Iraqi Freedom"? Estimates vary, but between 150,000 and 600,000 Iraqi men, women, and children have died.
They have been the victims of disease and infant mortality brought on by the destruction of Iraq"s water and sewage system (still not repaired); and, for that matter, also victims of the destruction of what under Saddam had been the best health service in the Arab Middle East.
It is no wonder that four million Iraqis have become refugees, either inside Iraq itself or in countries such as Jordan and Syria.
The foreign occupiers have also paid heavily in blood.
The total of American servicemen and women killed in action is approaching 4,000, plus some 20,000 wounded.
The very much smaller British forces have seen 175 of their troops killed, and nearly 1,400 personnel have been wounded badly enough to be evacuated from theatre.
Yet there have been other grim consequences for the West, since the invasion of Iraq - consequences brought about by the sheer ruthlessness of America"s conduct of the so-called "War on Terror".
We can remember the appalling scenes of fire and devastation during the "total war" bombing of Baghdad exactly five years ago tonight.
We can remember the destruction wrought on civilian homes in Iraq and their inhabitants ever since then by American counter-insurgency operations, as in the 2004 battle of Fallujah. And not forgetting the illegal Guantanamo Bay concentration camp, where prisoners have been held for years without charge or trial, or the practice of "extraordinary rendition", the kidnapping of suspected terrorists in one country for interrogation under torture in another.
Only this month President Bush has endorsed the practice of interrogation by "waterboarding", or simulated drowning.
So, who can wonder that there has been a floodtide of anger among Muslims everywhere against America and its allies?
We now know beyond doubt that this Muslim rage at American ruthlessness has served to fuel the global Islamist jihadi movement - especially among young Muslims living in the West.
Five years on, we can, therefore, accurately measure the scale and scope of the catastrophe wrought by Bush and Blair.
This makes it all the more vital that we avoid a future repetition in some other unfortunate non-Western country.
Such avoidance requires first of all that we understand the basic convictions that motivated Bush and Blair.
Both men are religious fanatics seeing international relations as a struggle between Good and Evil, rather than the pragmatic fixing of business between nation states.
And both men bought the grandiose theorising of glib but influential academics.
These neo-cons promoted a vision of the United States converting the whole world to American-style democracy, thanks to the leverage of her unrivalled military power. And Iraq was to provide the initial bridgehead, but it has resulted in a failed state and hence a big failure for Bush & Blair
In Britain, the equivalent visionaries peddled the concept of "liberal interventionism", whereby it was no longer necessary to respect the sovereignty of the nation state, as enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations and as acknowledged in international relations for 400 years.
Instead, these visionaries preached that it was legitimate, even a moral duty, for liberal democracies to intervene in other states if their regimes were tyrannies oppressing their own people.
So, what is the final lesson for the West five years after the attack on Iraq?
It is quite simple, mind your own business