Posted on 03/28/2006 6:48:27 AM PST by Dark Skies
You won’t find me criticizing President Bush often; I’m convinced he is God’s man for this time in our country and our world. However, when it comes to the travesty involving Muslim convert to Christianity Abdul Rahman, I have plenty of excoriation to carry Mr. Bush through the rest of his term.
This recent and egregious violation of the highest of human rights—the right of religious conscience—nullifies any claim to “freedom” in the “new” Afghanistan. When I addressed this matter in a face-to-face with the European educated secular-minded Afghan ambassador, his response seemed dismissive of religion as something not worth risking internal conflict over.
I begged to disagree. I have always asserted that religion is the most important freedom any human being can enjoy. Religion represents the deepest, most passionate, most enduring and most transcendent of personal and corporate beliefs. Religion shapes one’s inner consciousness, morality, worldview, family and social structures. Religion also dictates how we see life as a whole, as well as death. In other words, religion concerns itself with the whole of our existence. Nothing is bigger than that.
Most relevant to Mr. Rahman’s plight, though, religion has much to say about how we treat our neighbors.
Without the freedom for every person to change his or her religion, there isn’t religious freedom. Without religious freedom, there isn’t any freedom at all. So, I would argue until Afghanistan not only assures religious freedom for all its citizens, but practices it in law and in society, it is not a “free” nation. Further, the sad story of Abdul Rahman puts the lie to any claim by Afghanistan or by the Bush Administration that the new Afghan constitution protects religious minorities. After all, the “minority among minorities” is always the convert from one religion to another.
No society can claim it practices religious freedom until it protects the smallest and most vulnerable of religious communities—in this case, one who, by his own choice, left Islam to embrace Christianity.
The Bush Administration missed the opportunity to place religious freedom at the top of the list of required conditions for the new Afghan government. With all due respect, the President failed when he didn’t issue a “no compromise” mandate for protecting every Afghan citizen’s God-given right to worship God according to the dictates of his or her own conscience. Notwithstanding the Afghan president’s capitulation to US pressure in securing Convert Rahman’s release, this flaw in Afghanistan’s constitutional DNA may prove a fateful—and fatal —flaw for its future.
I, for one, am deeply saddened the sacrifice of American and Afghan lives in the end resulted in such an unsatisfactory outcome. Let us pray that Mr. Bush, his administration and the new leaders of Afghanistan will match this sacrifice with the same commitment to freedom.
He has been freed you Whine All The Time morons.
Cuckoo, Cuckoo!
The problem is that little sentence in their constitution, that no law can go against islamic law. Where there's islamic law there is no freedom of religion and therefore there can be no democracy. So much for Iraq's constitution also!
I don't even know what to say here.
Ummm, whine much? The guy is out after intense pressure by the Bush administration was applied...what else could Bush have done?
Sheesh. Some peole are truly dim.
Did I miss something?
The outcome was quite satisfactory, as Rahman is on his way to Italy, which has given him asylum.
It is by the grace of God that we don't have ministers or priests in positions of secular authority in our government.
Oiled Ted Kennedy's seat. How nice.
This guy has an interesting history of activism with Randall Terry and Pat Robertson.
Coalition blood has been spilt and for what.
Freedom has two main components...freedom of speech and freedom of religion/belief. Afghanistan has neither.
Yeah, some people are truly frikken dim.
Do you think his case has changed it for all christians in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan?
Did they amend their constitution in the last few days?
Abdul's release is only a face saving gesture, nothing has changed in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.
I, for one, am glad that the Taliban is no longer in control of Afghanistan and al Qaeda's base of operations was broken. Their ability to plan and execute a terrorist strike against our country has clearly been hampered by our efforts in Afghanistan.
And in the end, Rahman wasn't executed, so I guess we've put down all those nay-sayers who claim there are no happy endings. ;-)
Don't know. Kharzai will have to address this politically, i.e., change the constitution. He knows that's what has to be done.
Schenk's implication that Bush can unilaterally force a legislative solution anywhere is hopelessly naive.
I'd say it's Schenk.
Yep, that's why we are there!
We have seen one person escape, but there are millions of other trapped in the darkness of islam.
Ah! Every time you say "deeply saddened" you have to put a penny in Tom Daschle's jar.
I tried selling mousepads on cafepress with that phrase and Tommy said he would OWN me if I tried to sell them. /joshin'
We put a government in place that does not recognize basic human religious freedom.
The guy has been freed, but justice has not been served in this case. For all practical purposes, the guy is exiled. The custody battle that resulted in the charges against this guy, has been lost, along with all visitation of his daughters.
The court was unwilling to resolve the conflicts in the constitution. And perhaps that's for the best, for now, because the court might have ruled in favor of Sharia law. And a ruling in favor of Universal Human Rights would have caused civil unrest.
Maybe what Afghanistan needs is time to come to grips with human rights. But you can't help but wonder, whether we failed Afghanistan and our goal of instilling basic freedoms in the middle east, by allowing the clause that makes Sharia law supreme, to be included in the constitution.
Meanwhile there is a report that two more Christians have been arrested and another hospitalized after being beaten.
And there's this exerpt from a newsmax.com report...
Link to Newsmax article containing exerpt below
On Monday, hundreds of clerics, students and others chanting "Death to Christians!" marched through the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif to protest the court decision Sunday to dismiss the case. Several Muslim clerics threatened to incite Afghans to kill Rahman if he is freed, saying that he is clearly guilty of apostasy and deserves to die.
"Abdul Rahman must be killed. Islam demands it," said senior Cleric Faiez Mohammed, from the nearby northern city of Kunduz. "The Christian foreigners occupying Afghanistan are attacking our religion."
But what about a religion that doesn't tolerate other religions? Religious toleration generally serves the common good, but not always. The first principle of government is the promotion of the common good, not absolute toleration.
>>>He has been freed you Whine All The Time morons.>>>
Yes, freed to be decapitated by his family members and other radical muslims.
Why should anyone whine about that eh?
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