Stein: 'Facing down a culture where they talk like crazies' :: Abdul Rahman

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March 26, 2006

Stein: 'Facing down a culture where they talk like crazies'

What should we be saying to a culture where leaders talk and act like crazies stuck in the middle ages? As everyone certainly knows by now, Abdul Rahman is being prosecuted under Afghanistan's Islamic laws for converting 16 years ago while working as a medical aid worker for an international Christian group helping Afghan refugees in Pakistan. And the rhetoric from the clerics and much of the populace in Afghanistan sounds like voices of madmen in the dark ages, totally inappropriate for a modern world. So we now have a war within a war, a war of cultures, one of which is stuck in the dark ages, within a war against Islamic extremism and Islamofascism that is actually killing more Muslims than non-Muslims.

Mark Stein, writing at the Chicago Sun Times, says that fate conspires to remind us that this war is really about civilizational confidence, and that we are seeing history repeat itself: first the farce of the Danish cartoons, and now the tragedy -- a man on trial for his life in post-Taliban Afghanistan because he has committed the crime of converting to Christianity.

The impending execution of Abdul Rahman for embracing Christianity is, of course, offensive to Westerners, and so around the world we reacted equally violently by issuing blood-curdling threats like that made by State Department spokesman Sean McCormack: "Freedom of worship is an important element of any democracy," he said. "And these are issues as Afghan democracy matures that they are going to have to deal with increasingly."

The immediate problem for Rahman is whether he'll get the chance to "mature" along with Afghan democracy. The president, the Canadian prime minister and the Australian prime minister have all made statements of concern about his fate, and it seems clear that Afghanistan's dapper leader Hamid Karzai would like to resolve this issue before his fledgling democracy gets a reputation as just another barbarous Islamist sewer state. There's talk of various artful compromises, such as Rahman being declared unfit to stand trial by reason of insanity on the grounds that (I'm no Islamic jurist so I'm paraphrasing here) anyone who converts from Islam to Christianity must ipso facto be out of his tree.

On the other hand, this "moderate" compromise solution is being rejected by leading theologians. Let this guy Rahman cop an insanity plea and there goes the neighborhood. "We will not allow God to be humiliated. This man must die," says Abdul Raoulf of the nation's principal Muslim body, the Afghan Ulama Council. "Cut off his head! We will call on the people to pull him into pieces so there's nothing left." Needless to say, Imam Raoulf is one of Afghanistan's leading "moderate" clerics.

AS is usual with Stein, read more to be both informed and entertained...

Speaking of civilizational (and cultural) confidence, while many Christians believe that conversion to Islam from Christianity is stepping away from the table of reason and sanity, and also turning away from true peace and love, rather than condemn the convert and wish them harm, instead they pray for him wish him well.

There are, of course, many Muslims that possibly feel the same way as these Christians I speak of.

So there's a message here that I'll leave to readers, and let them draw their own conclusions.

Posted by Richard at March 26, 2006 6:26 AM

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