As the Bush administration and much of the rest of the world steps up pressure on Afghanistan to save Abdul Rahman, thousands of youths are descending on Kabul to demand that he be hanged for renouncing Islam, as Muslim clerics fuel religious fervor over the case in order to turn up pressure for a broader alliance against the presence of foreign forces in the country. Surely, the Taliban and Islamists within the country are trying to force the Bush administration and its allies to rethink their position on Afghanistan.

Although the world community will continue to pressure Afghanistan to release Rahman, and as President Bush has noted, that US forces did not help liberate Afghanistan from Taliban rule so that conservative Islamic judges could issue death sentences against people because of their religious beliefs, it doesn't appear that the masses in Afghanistan are willing to listen, again, likely because of sociological and cultural factors fueled by the Islamic clerics who manipulate the populace under the name of Allah:

"Regardless of the court decision [whether or not he is hanged], there is unanimous agreement by all religious scholars from the north to the south, the east to the west of Afghanistan, that Abdul Rahman should be executed," Engineer Ahmad Shah Ahmad Zai told Asia Times Online on telephone from Kabul.

Ahmad Shah is a prominent mujahideen leader and head of the Hizb-i-Iqtadar-i-Islami Afghanistan. He was an acting prime minister in the government of Professor Burhanuddin Rabbani before the Taliban came to power in 1996.

"There is widespread dissent among the masses against the activities of Christian missionaries. These missions exploit the poverty of Afghan people and they pay them to convert. These activities will only translate into fierce reaction as Afghans do not tolerate anything against their religion," Ahmad Shah said.

"Since Abdul Rahman comes from the Panjshir Valley, people of the area are coming down to Kabul to show their dissent against him and demand that the court execute him," Ahmad Shah explained.

Needless to say, there's much work to be done behind the scenes, but continued vociferous outcries from the world community are a necessity. The outcry needs to be led by outraged Muslims throughout the world, who must provide theological and humanitarian reasons for the Afghan judiciary to rule in favor of the release of Abdul Rahman. The voices of Western governments and non-Muslims of the West, without help from moderate Muslims (and I mean here - truly moderate Muslims, those that walk the walk as well as talking the talk), are not going to be heard within Afghanistan, and will not be listened to by a Muslim populace largely in control of radical clerics.

As Will at KABOBfest writes:

(...) ... outraged Muslims around the world need to give theological reasons for the judiciary to rule otherwise and for public opinion to change enough so that the legislature can make changes to the law. Criminalizing Apostasy, to me, is the marking of an insecure and weak religion. I believe Muslims should have ultimate confidence in Islam so that we feel pity and pray for those who leave it.

(...) A movement to save Abdul Rahman must be indigeneous and rooted in Muslim values. Otherwise, I'm afraid Abdul Rahman will either die for his beliefs or Afghanistan's legitimacy will be undercut. Afghanistan's government will be set back if he is saved from execution inorganically, meaning as the result of illegitimate external interventions.

(...) Too many Afghans believe Rahman is part of a Christian plot.

"He has been sent by Christian priests to convert others," said Ramatullah, a trader in the southern city of Kandahar. "He has sold out his religion and should be punished."

(...) As far as the external pressure western countries are trying in order to change that public opinion, I have two words: Good Luck!

(...) For many Muslims, the American invasion of Muslim lands is simply an extension of the Crusades -- an interpretation some comments by Bush and American religious figures only bolstered. If the government tries too hard to bend the Constitution to save Abdul Rahman, it runs the risk of undermining further its own mandate.

While I may disagree with much of the flavor of Wills piece, and some of the content as well, I find myself very much in agreement with him in a practical sense. His points regarding the need for Muslim intervention in order to save Abdul Rahman are very well made.

On the other hand, if Abdul Rahman was an Islamic convert from Christianity, the world community would not even be having a discussion about the matter. It wouldn't be necessary. Christians do not entertain killing people that disagree with them, or that leave the faith - though we most certainly believe them to be much misguided.

One final set of comments are in order here. The case of Abdul Rahman opens the door to a very big question: Is democracy compatible with Islamic law? I say that Islamic law is absolutely not compatible with democracy. Real Clear Politics has addressed this:

Administration officials have said over and over that we shouldn't expect democracy in Iraq or Afghanistan to look like democracy in England or the U.S. That's fine - up to a point. But reasonable people have to wonder how the new Afghanistan, with a government we essentially installed, can legally allow executions based solely on one's religion.

I'm one of those reasonable people who believe that allowing someone to be executed for his religious beliefs, or even thinking about doing it, is indicative of a barbarism and a backward culture, and yes if it is part of a religious belief - the religion too, that belong in another century, long past, and long ago put behind us.

As I wrote on March 22, If after spilling American blood in Afghanistan to not only remove it as a safe haven for Al-Qaeda but to also free it's people from the repressive Taliban regime, a man can still be executed for converting from Islam to Christianity, then we have completely wasted precious American lives, and the Islamists of Afghanistan are too deeply locked into the barbarism of the middle ages and too backward, to be brought into the modern world.

In thinking or even considering that democracy and Islamic law are compatible, we in the West have made a serious mistake - we've ignored the mandatory requirement that civil authority be insulated from religious authority, principles that are compatible with Judism and Christianity, but not Islam! This is pointed out by Andy McCarthy (via RCP), who points to our own complicity in the drafting of laws in Iraq and Afghanistan that are now coming back to bite us:

You reap what you sow. What is happening in Afghanistan (and in Iraq) is precisely what we bought on to when we actively participated in the drafting of constitutions which -- in a manner antithetical to the development of true democracy -- ignored the imperative to insulate the civil authority from the religious authority, installed Islam as the state religion, made sharia a dominant force in law, and expressly required that judges be trained in Islamic jurisprudence. To have done all those things makes outrage at today's natural consequences ring hollow.

We can pull our heads up from the sand now and say, "No, no, no! We're nice people. We didn't mean it that way. That's too uncivilized to contemplate." But the inescapable truth is: the United States made a calculated decision that it wasn't worth our while to fight over Islamic law (indeed, we encouraged it as part of the political solution). People who objected (like moi) were told that we just didn't grasp the cultural dynamic at work. I beg to differ -- we understood it only too well.

Islamic law does not consider conviction, imprisonment, or death for apostasy to be an affront to civilization. That's the way it is.

And that is a big problem for President Bush, the United States and the entire free world.

As I said, Islamic law and democracy are not compatible, it is an inescapable fact, and that indeed is a very big problem for President Bush, the United States and the entire free world!!!

Readers are encouraged to help by participating in one or more of the actions:

Please help save the life of Abdul Rahman. Call, email, and sign the petition. Then pass all this along to everyone you know throughout the world.

International Christian Concern, an interdenominational human rights organization based in Washington, has urged "all concerned parties to contact the Embassy of Afghanistan to express their opposition to this violation of freedom of conscience and urge the immediate acquittal of Abdul Rahman."

The contact information is Embassy of Afghanistan, 2341 Wyoming Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20008; telephone, (202) 483-6410; fax, (202) 483-6488; e-mail.

Call the White House: 202-456-1111
Call the State Department: 202-647-4000

Sign a Petition in support of Abdur Rahman

Don't forget the rally for Abdul Rahman tomorrow in D.C.

Friday March 24
Noon to 1pm
Outside the Afghan Embassy
2341 Wyoming Ave NW.
Washington DC

Update: Judith at Kesher Talk points to The Counterterrorism Blog's post: The Apostasy Problem is Far Larger than Abdul Rahman. The post addresses some of the very same issues we have talked about here at Hyscience - sharia and democracy are like water and oil:

This is fundamentally an issue that people in the counterterrorism field and those who follow terrorism should care about. The Bush administration has invested in a strategy of democratization to counter the extremism that can be found in the Islamic world. But voting rights will not serve as an effective counterbalance to extremism if voting is simply superimposed over the current Middle Eastern political systems, with their lack of basic political freedoms. The most crucial freedoms for creating true democracy in the Middle East are freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of religion -- and of these, the lack of freedom of religion in the region is the most dramatic.

Read it all...

Technorati: Abdul Rahman, Afghanistan, Islam, Taliban,

Related:
Free Abdul Rahman
Afghanistan: Case of Abdul Rahman underlines urgent need for judicial reform
The Abdul Rahman Case - Is Democracy Dead in Afghanistan?

From The Big Pharoah - Look who wants Abdul Rahman dead. Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission.