Posted on 03/21/2006 8:31:10 AM PST by Crackingham
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.
I wonder if things would have been the same if he had converted to Catholicism?
Chuck Colson is a great man. And this is a great column. I think he means what he says. The central problem in the War on Terror, or against Islamofascism, is how to wean the Muslims from jihad, oppression, and violence. Where do you draw the line between Islamofascism and Islam? How do you teach these people about freedom of the will, which is the basic essential for Democracy?
We draw our idea of freedom from Judaism and Christianity, from a God Who wants His people to freely love Him and freely choose to obey Him. Islam portrays an Allah who allows no free will and a religious society that says, "Submit or die."
So, can Democratization undermine that attitude? Democracy is a powerful tool. Freedom has shown itself to be a powerful lure. But can it work against Islam? Christianity is spreading in Communist China, against the oppression of a totalitarian state. But Christianity is not spreading in any Muslim country, because, as we see in this example, a man's own family will gladly turn against him, steal his children from him, and report him to the police.
In China, this sometimes happens out of fear. During the Great Cultural Revolution, children turned in parents and parents turned in children. But these kinds of betrayals were not universal. It seems as if, in Islam, they are. Husbands murder wives, fathers murder daughters, parents turn in children, for the least violation of Muslim precepts, which include the directives that no one has free will, everyone must submit to Allah and his self-appointed deputies, and the penalty for conversion, or anything that can be called straying from the path, is death.
When we went into Afghanistan and Iraq, the Left said Bush was seeking an Imperial Presidency. We were a hegemonic force, carving out an empire. Grabbing land and holding on to it.
Now, Afghanistan and Iraq have had elections. They are free. They are free to vote in ways that we don't like. That's all good. But, if we go swooping in, and saying (if effect) that the puppet regime in Kabul has not made the decision that they were supposed to make, but we can correct that little problem, and we subsequently rescue this good Christian man ... well, that plays out a little bit like what the Democrats have been accusing us of doing.
Very sad situation.
Some people are not fit for democracy. I hope we aren't going to learn that the hard way. You aren't going to get leadership that supports freedom of religion out of people who were raised on the ethic, kill the infidels.
Islam and Democracy are not compatible. This would not be happening if they were.
Bullseye!
Sharia Law and individual freedoms and human rights are incompatible with each other. Sharia is an integral component of Islam. Until the two are separated (highly unlikely), truly democratic rule will not take root, much less flourish.
It is foolish to assume one can successfully integrate Islam and concepts derived directly from our distinctly Western and Biblical roots. Unfortunately, it is a chimera political and theological Liberals will continue to chase as they pursue their mistaken belief in the inherent goodness and perfectibility of mankind.
I have an easy answer whenever I hear anybody talk about our "conquests" and "occupation". If they were wars of conquests and we mean to occupy, where is the movement to make Afghanistan and Iraq into the 51st and 52nd states?
What was the alternative? We weren't going to go to war against both the Taliban AND the opium growing warlords who are slightly less crazy and slightly less Islamist. If there are any Western style liberals in Afghanistan, they are too few to build a society around.
True enough, but even moreso, it is what should be expected from islam.
The sooner we realize that islam is incompatible with civil society the sooner we will have a handle on the problem.
Spiritual naviete is rampant in the world, yes, including America, and tolerance of the abomination of islam in positions of political power is tantamount to a suicide wish.
Frankly, we are probably doing the best we can do with the poor hand we are dealt and the force we are willing to apply.
The only hope for long term success is to open these Muslim countries up to the Gospel and let it do the work we are unable to do - which is change these cultures and their enslaved mindsets from within.
In a democracy, people are free to vote in ways that you don't like.
This is true, and its just as true that, as the president says often, democracy in Iraq or Afghanistan isn't going to look like ours. He's right about that.
But, in the end, we have to be clear with ourselves even if we don't say it aloud, that Iraq and Afghanistan were threats to ourselves and to their own people, not because they weren't democrats, but because they were muslim fascists and muslim theocrats.
It isn't enough for a country to be democratic, the hold that medieval islamic culture has over it has to be broken. Helping to introduce democratic, republican principles starts that process; helping to introduce modernity in economic and political matters helps, but in the end one of the most important things we have to do is to break the hold that medieval islam has over these countries.
Kharzai has to know that this is a big deal. Don't ask America to stand by while his government executes a Christian for being a Christian. If he does this he is finished. If we allow it we are exposed as impotent. We don't see ourselves as a Christian country, perhaps, but they do. If we won't defend Christianity, if we won't defend a Christian who is being railroaded, it only reinforces their belief that their madness is god-directed.
When we occupied Japan, one of the first things we did was to break the hold that emperor-worship had over the country. We did it by respectfully humiliating him. We have to do the same thing with medieval islam. We have to expose it, respectfully of course, as an embarrassment from a bygone age.
I will also add that when Hamas won the Palestinian election, the US basically said: "We support the democratic election process. We would never dream of forcing them to change their election results. We'll just cut off their funding and hope that they figure out what's in their best interests."
I think that our nation should *cough* work with Karzai *cough* to make sure that the government of Afghanistan does not kill Christian converts.
*cough* I agree. As a goodwill gesture, we should find someone who converted to Islam, and offer a trade.
I'm adopting a wait-and-see approach. I will wager that this case will set a precedent that it's OK to convert to another religion in the new, free Afghanistan.
What amazes me is the the administration ever thought it could. It sheds a bright light on their naivete about islam.
The essence of the Bush doctrine as developed in his next to last SOTUS address, which was so badly received by Peggy Noonan, is that Democracy is a realistic tool to effect cultural change. Just as the Communists used class warfare and resentment to motivate people toward revolution, Democracy can raise a thirst for freedom that is hard to repress.
This has worked numerous times. It was one of the things that brought down the Berlin Wall and ended Soviet hegemony. But there's a real question whether it can work against Islam. It could be that we also need Christian missionaries and martyrs to effect the change, in combination with the powerful lure of freedom.
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