Of course, even if Rahman gets off the legal hook, that doesn’t mean there won’t be fatwas galore coming down from righteously outraged clerics anxious to rid the country, not to mention this terrestrial sphere, of the offensive apostate. And so far, none of his fellow countrymen have been cutting Rahman a whole lot of slack.
For instance, Afghanistan's attorney general had said Rahman should be hanged and jail employee Hosnia Wafayosofi told the Chicago Tribune that "we will cut him into little pieces." Senior Muslim clerics also threw in their two cents worth and declared that Rahman should be killed regardless of whether a court decides to free him.
Wow! So much for hearts and minds. And there’s plenty more where that came from as indicated by this further sampling of remarks from various clerics:
“Rejecting Islam is insulting God. We will not allow God to be humiliated. This man must die.” (This was from Abdul Raoulf, by the way, who was jailed three times for opposing the Taliban before it was ousted and is considered a “moderate.”)
“Cut off his head! We will call on the people to pull him into pieces so there’s nothing left.”
“The government is scared of the international community. But the people will kill him if he is freed.”
“If he is allowed to live in the West, then others will claim to be Christian so they can too. We must set an example . . . He must be hanged.”
“We are a small country and we welcome the help the outside world is giving us. But please don’t interfere in this issue. We are Muslims and these are our beliefs. This is much more important to us than all the aid the world has given us.”
Talk about misplaced priorities. The list of unabashedly medieval quotes could go on all day, but take another look at that last quote. “We are Muslims and these are our beliefs.”
In other words, being Muslim is an excuse to believe any harebrained claptrap one likes. And this particular harebrained claptrap is the idea that anyone who converts from Islam to another religion deserves to be killed. But that’s what Muslims believe, so the West just has to deal with it, right?
Article comments
1 - Samuel James
brilliant piece Greg
You are absolutley on the mark about the centrality of religious freedom in the Middle East. This is, perhaps, W's great shortsight. Churches can burn in Alabama with no bloodbath or chaos. But a Mosque goes down in Iraq? Fatality overload. I'm still not sure the President sees this
2 - Joseph Melendrez
Excellent opinion piece on the insanity the situation. Islam comes off as a very weak religion. They submit themselves to vast mind-control, i.e. praying in public five times a day. But they negate God's gift of reason so that is completely useless to these people.
3 - gracefulboomer
Great article. Thank you. Right on the mark with this posting.
The phrase 'Taliban Lite' was used by Paul Marshall writing in NRO on November 7, 2003, who accurately and eerily predicted just such a case as the recent attempted prosecution of Abdul Rahman for apostasy, among other continuing horrors.
'Taliban Lite' - National Review Online
Lest We Forget- the United States helped the new Afghan government write the constitution that allowed that poor Christian guy to be tried for converting to Christianity from Islam. The United States accepted Sharia law for the Afghan constitution. We were there every step of the way in the writing of it.
The United States installed the government of Afghan, we promoted the Loya Jerga.
Hamid Karzai is our guy. He is our hand-picked guy.
The United States did not insist that civil law be separated from Islamic law ..... so we are reaping what we sowed.
It was foretold at the time of the writing of the Afghan constitution that apostasy convictions would occur and that the U.N.'s Universal Declaration of Human Rights would not prevent this type of persecution.
Signing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights hasn't stopped any beheadings in any other Islamic republic. Or the trials .
We knew long before this case came to trial that this would happen... and the Bushies did nothing then when it would have mattered.
Rumsfield likes to compare Japan and Germany to Afghanistan and Iraq- he is a fool- the United States made it illegal after the war for their ideologies to continue- Japan glowed and Germany burned before they were defeated and were willing to turn away from their beliefs and accept a reformation of their societies and civil law.
As long as the United States continues to allow and even (in this case where we had control) encourage Muslims to institute Sharia Law - without breaking out and declaring the civil component of constitutional law to be the deciding factor this crap will continue.
And our children will have to deal with this... unlike Germany and Japan -our government then completely took care of the problem, paid for it in blood and money and did not pass the problem on to future generations.
What I can not understand is how Condi Rice, and Bush can say they are 'surprised' or 'disappointed or 'concerned' or 'displeased' with the Afghans. How can they feign such ignorance? They were there every step of the way...
How can we be in a 'war' in two places and bleed, and fight, and die and approve of the same practices which got us there in the first place?
I mean they are the same bunch that helped the Afghans write the damn constitution that allowed this poor Christian man to be put on trial in the first place.
4 - desto
wasn't there a rumour though that hamid karzai converted to christianity, would surely explain this.