Posted on 03/22/2006 9:40:41 PM PST by Mr. Silverback
Since October 2001, approximately three hundred Americans have been killed and another eight hundred have been wounded in Afghanistan. The overthrow of the Taliban was about more than denying a base of operations to al Qaeda—it was also about liberating the people of Afghanistan from a brutal theocracy.
All of this makes recent news from Kabul all the more ironic—and outrageous.
Abdul Rahman is on trial for his life in a Kabul court. His crime? Converting to Christianity.
According to reports, Rahman converted to Christianity sixteen years ago while working for a Christian group that helped Afghan refugees in Peshawar, Pakistan. When he returned to Afghanistan in 2002, he tried to regain custody of his daughters from his parents. They referred the matter to the police, and his conversion came to the attention of Afghani authorities.
While the Taliban no longer rules the country, conversion from Islam to another religion, called apostasy, is still punishable by death. The prosecutor offered to drop the charges if Rahman converted back to Islam, but Rahman refused. According to the prosecutor, Rahman “said he was a Christian and would always remain one.”
That fidelity could cost Rahman his life if the judge decides that his “attack on Islam” meets the requirements of apostasy.
The irony is inescapable: This is the country that we rid of the Taliban because of its religious oppression. This is the country in which we have spent at least $70 billion to establish a free democratic government. This is the country whose freedom cost us three hundred American lives and eight hundred casualties. And this is the country that is preparing to execute a man for becoming a Christian after he witnessed other Christians caring for his countrymen.
Is this the fruit of democracy? Is this why we have shed American blood and invested American treasure to set a people free? What have we accomplished for overthrowing the Taliban? This is the kind of thing we would expect from the Taliban, not from President Karzai and his freely elected democratic government.
I have supported the Bush administration’s foreign policy because I came to believe that the best way to stop Islamo-fascism was by promoting democracy. But if we can’t guarantee fundamental religious freedoms in the countries where we establish democratic reforms, then the whole credibility of our foreign policy is thrown into serious question. I hope the president and the administration can recognize what a devastating setback Rahman’s execution would be to the cause of democracy and freedom.
But just in case they don’t, we had better tell them. While Abdul Rahman is prepared to be a martyr, it is our solemn obligation before God to protest as loudly and strenuously as we can. You need to both call and e-mail your elected representatives and the White House. You need to tell them that Abdul Rahman’s execution must not take place. You need to let them know that “democracy” worth the name must include protection of the most basic human right: freedom of conscience and belief.
Otherwise, places like Afghanistan, whoever is in charge, are nothing more than brutal theocracies and will always remain so.
Take action:
Contact your representative and senators (Capitol switchboard: 202-224-3121) and President Bush (e-mail president@whitehouse.gov or call 202-456-1111), and urge them to take action to prevent the execution of Afghan Christian Abdul Rahman.
Contact the Afghan Embassy in Washington:
2341 Wyoming Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20008 (202) 483-6410
There are links to further information at the source document.
If anyone wants on or off my Chuck Colson/BreakPoint Ping List, please notify me here or by freepmail.
BreakPoint/Chuck Colson Ping!
If anyone wants on or off my Chuck Colson/BreakPoint Ping List, please notify me here or by freepmail.
I would like to be on your ping list. THANX
I am praying for Abdul Rahman. Unfortunately, I doubt there is anything that any of us, including President Bush, can do.
Bookmark for later emails and calls.
"With man it is impossible. But with God all things are possible."
The thesis that promoting democracy - a political framework - to overcome islam - a religion - is flawed. The way to overcome a religion is through another religion. Our dealings with the middle east should center upon their tolerance of Christianity first, democracy and economics second and third. Religious tolerance first and foremost would eventually allow other secular political reforms to occur. islam is no basis for democracy, and that's the third rail of American politics in the 21st century.
Why would the left be opposed to his execution? They want to eliminate Christianity and are for anything that helps that effort!
Good analysis. I think that one of the things that theoretically makes it slightly possible, however, is that Islam is also a political system, and the hope is that if the political part of it can somehow be separated out and replaced with democracy, the religious part will lose some of its virulence. The problem is, IMHO, that the two are inseparable; Islam is a total system that accounts for every aspect of the believer's life, down to what hand he wipes himself with. I don't think it's possible to winkle out the political aspect and use that as a wedge to change Islam or at any rate to moderate it so it's capable of sharing the world with other people.
Demanding that they tolerate Christianity (and Judaism) if they want to deal with us sounds to me like a good idea, though; but it's not going to happen.
A preview of what will happen if/when islam becomes the dominant "religion" anywhere.
Time to block all immigration from muslim countries NOW.
So if you center your policy on their tolerance of Christianity, that would be like the Jews centering their policy in prewar europe on NAZIism's tolerance of their religion.
I would offer the better approach is for Christianity to do what it has been doing and tolerate other religions that are peaceful, including muslims who demonstrate western traits. However, the non-muslim world should be prepared to defend itself with physical force, combat, against attacks by these medeval creatures. According to Wafta Sultan, it is the muslims who dividend the world into muslims and non-muslims. Since they said it, I'm using the expression. The non-muslim world is dominant and is better and should continue its dominance through military means because force is all these tribal types understand. All non-muslim religions and the atheists and agnostics have a stake in this too. There is more at stake than just a mans ability to openly believe in Christ. Most, not all of what we consider to be our modern legal system, our political system, our liberty, grew out of the old and new testaments and the western tradition. The other part is where collectivism has encroached, and should that be purged. I wrote in another thread that in fact the welfare state (collectivism) in Europe is transferring wealth from the taxed productive (those who work) who are not having large families to the rapidly breeding welfare receiving islamics who live unproductive lives in these festering ghettos.
Only some in the West think that is possible. The Islamic world knows better, whether 'fundie' or 'moderate'. If we do nothing about this political regression, we will have to admit defeat in our larger goal of reforming the Mideast. If we make a big deal of it, the fundies will portray us a 'Crusaders', aiming to replace Islam with Christianity, followed by equality for women, sex and alcohol, heretical images displayed in public (a cross on a Christian church, for example), and many other things that have been strictly taboo for over a thousand years.
Our President said (and I agree whole-heartedly) that the thirst for freedom is universal. However, the suffocating effect of a religion that has not changed in any important way for over a thousand years may prove too great to overcome at this moment in history. If it turns into a 'religious war', we will not prevail. I fear the latent fundamentalism of our 'moderate' allies much more than any 'insurgents'.
On his Special Report last evening, Brit Hume stated that there was nothing in the Koran that would support the death sentence of Abdul Rahman. I was surprised that he was so ignorant about the teachings of Islam...or has the PC disease infected even Hume now? These Christian-hating and Jew-hating Muslims are simply getting back to the basics of Islam as taught in the Koran. The wishful thinking of our media does not change that fact.
Exactly what I meant. The only avenue left is prayer and regardless of the results he is still a winner.
Timing. The same reason the left voted for war in 2002--too close to the elections.
Interesting. Thanks for posting.
Historically, every time Islam begins to moderate a bit because it comes into contact with other cultures, it is attacked by its own more orthodox (and hence more fundamentalist) members. The rise of various Muslim fundamentalist/extremist movements in the 20th century are nothing but another expression of this built-in tendency. Islam is resistant to interpretation; theoretically, for example, the Jews should be out smiting unbelievers and dashing their children against the stones, because this appears frequently in the Old Testament, which forms a heavy component of Islam, as well. Judaism, however, long ago discovered interpretation and symbolic thinking, something that is categorically forbidden in Islam, which must be "interepreted" literally.
The result is that Muslim orthodoxy is 100% on the side of the extremists, and this is what gives them power to overwhelm the moderates time and again, and what makes an Islamic society fundamentally anti-modern and unstable, always subject to a return to theocracy and a takeover, usually violent, by radical fundamentalists.
Worry about Mr. Abdul Rahman and less so how the president may feel embarrassed that his policy may result in a Christian's martyrdom.
Bush never once mention the hundreds of Churches and Christians Kosovo Muslims destroyed on his watch - maybe it is time he was embarrassed a little bit and he take back his words that "Islam is a Religion of Peace".
Or is confronting Bush on this verbotten party policy because he is the Dear Leader?
Brit Hume and his ilk (dare I say 'bots?) are not about reporting the truth if that truth makes the Dear Leader look bad or threatens the Party line.
You may be right. But until we lose out of momentum, I'm all for bombing the Afghans every time they execute a Christian.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.