In his "Going Apostate - How the rest of the world handles apostasy laws", Joseph Loconte writes that the Rahman case underscores the conflict between Islamic law and democratic norms, and also hints at a growing argument among Muslims over religious freedom, a subject Americans know something about:

(...) On the issue of religious liberty, Afghanistan's new constitution tries to have it both ways. Though it says that "followers of other religions are free to exercise their faith," it declares the country an Islamic state. While it endorses the Universal Declaration of Human Rights--which specifically protects a person's right to change his religion--it supports a judicial culture that criminalizes blasphemy and apostasy. The country's supreme court already has invoked blasphemy laws to jail newspaper editors and intimidate political rivals.

(...) The typical liberal solution to this problem--to quarantine government from religious values, replacing militant religion with militant secularism--is foreclosed in tribal, traditionalist Afghanistan. Rather, the history of religious freedom in America suggests a way forward--a frankly theological approach that could appeal to faithful Muslims.

(...) It's often forgotten that the political leader most responsible for ending church establishments in America argued from an unabashedly religious standpoint. In his "Memorial and Remonstrance" of 1785, James Madison opposed tax support for churches in Virginia as an assault on individual conscience, which he regarded as a sacred realm. "Religion or the duty which we owe to our Creator . . . can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence," he wrote. "If this freedom be abused, it is an offense against God, not against man." Only by freely following one's conscience, he reasoned, could a person mature in his understanding of spiritual truths.

(...) Madison's faith-based argument won the day, and it animated his work on the First Amendment. It was this same principle that, a century and a half later, inspired defenders of a religious liberty clause in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, ratified by the U.N. General Assembly in 1948. Lebanese ambassador Charles Malik, who took the lead in drafting the religious freedom provision, Article 18, called freedom of thought and conscience "the most sacred and inviolable things" about human beings.

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Both authors essentially argue for the world to go beyond the individual case of Abdul Rahman and push for genuine religious freedom throughout the Muslim world. Essential to this reform is the elimination of laws against apostasy, blasphemy, heresy, and "insulting Islam." Such laws seek to place "dominant, reactionary interpretations of Islam beyond all criticism", which is most certainly their intent. By purposefully intertwining politics and religion, Islamists are able to make true political freedom impossible. Islamists want to control lives, not free them.

However, I agree with Loconte that as cases like Abdul Rahman continue to force the issue, democratic reformers in the Muslim world may discover a firm foundation within their own religious tradition. In short, the problem of apostasy in the Muslim world is indeed severe, but we are begining to see cracks appear in the wall that the Islamists have built to prevent Islam from criticism. In today's world, unlike the isolation of tribalism, people are begining to see what freedom is - and in time, they may learn how to experience it.

As James Madison said in his faith-based argument for freedom of and from religion: "Religion or the duty which we owe to our Creator . . . can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence, ... If this freedom be abused, it is an offense against God, not against man. Only by freely following one's conscience, he reasoned, could a person mature in his understanding of spiritual truths".

Now, if we can only convince the Islamists to think more about the reason and conviction part, and less about their traditional method of force and violence!