Why bother?
The
articles below speak for themselves.
Afghan convert escapes death penalty
Jack is a man of straw when Muslims talk of killing converts
Karzai 'gives pledge' to save Christian convert from execution
See also
By Pieternel Gruppen
28-03-2006
An Afghan man who converted from Islam to Christianity has been freed
from prison. Apostasy is a capital offence according to Sharia Islamic
law, but the accused man, Abdul Rahman escaped execution
because he was deemed mentally unfit to prosecute.During the row over the court case brought against Abdul Rahman, President Hamid Karzai was in the firing line. The west demanded that the charge against Mr Rahman was dropped. In the meantime, radical Muslims in his own country demanded he be executed for converting. The Afghan president seems, at least for the time being, to have solved this delicate matter.
Constitution test
Abdul Rahman converted to Christianity in Germany 16 years ago. According to traditional Islamic law, it's prohibited to convert to another religion, if you have been a Muslim. During the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, converts were regularly prosecuted. However, Abdel Rahman is the first Afghan to face prosecution under new legislation for apostasy. According to Faith McDonnell from the Institute for Religion and Democracy in Washington, the case was a test of the country's fledgling constitution: "This case is a test case to see if there are enough safeguards in the constitution to prevent people from being executed for their faith and really prevent religious prosecution from taking place."
"Many people were concerned that there were not enough safeguards in this constitution and that even though it talks about religious freedoms for individuals there is another part of the constitution that says that no law can be contrary to the sacred religion of Islam."
Clarification
However, this result doesn't clarify the stance of the Afghan government regarding religious freedom. After all, Mr Rahman has been released due to a lack of evidence and doubts about his mental condition, the new constitution played no role in his freedom. For Afghanistan analyst Willem Vogelsang, this is an unsatisfactory outcome, although he does think the release of Mr Rahman reveals a little about the position of the Afghan government: "I do think that this is a good sign that the Afghan government releases someone, who is so obviously a convert to Christianity. I think that indicates that common sense prevails."
Foreign troops
The international pressure on the Afghan government was eventually decisive. According to Faith McDonnell, many people were asking themselves why foreign troops had invaded Afghanistan in the first place:
"Many people in the west were really puzzled and were saying: isn't this why we went into Afghanistan in the first place, to bring about democracy and freedom for all people? That is a very legitimate question. If our troops went in and died for freedom than we had better encourage and ensure president Karzai allows that kind of freedom."
Aid and influence
Also in Afghanistan many people shared the western countries' concern. They realised that their country is still hugely dependent on foreign aid. On the contrary for many radical Muslims the western interference is a constant thorn in the side. To them, Abdul Rahman has grown into the symbol of the far-reaching western influence on their country.
By Charles Moore
25/03/2006
When the row about the Danish cartoons of Mohammed broke, no one was quicker out of the traps than our Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw. He roundly condemned what he saw as the irresponsibility of their publication It was not clear why Mr Straw felt the need to speak up. Britain has no responsibility for independent, democratic Denmark, nor for the European countries in which the cartoons were republished.
We do, however, bear considerable responsibility for Afghanistan. We helped invade it in 2001 to overthrow the Islamist Taliban government, and ever since then we have helped rebuild government and society there, including the framing of a new constitution. The other day, we sent yet more troops to help keep the uneasy peace. We boast, with some justice, that we have set Afghanistan free.
So the news that a Muslim is threatened with
death by an Afghan court
simply because he converted to Christianity should surely alarm Mr
Straw. So far - and the case has been in the press for more than a week
- we have heard nothing audible from him. President Bush has said he is
"deeply troubled" by the case. Condoleezza Rice and many European
governments have put strong pressure on the Afghan authorities to
release the man, Abdul Rahman,
citing Article 18 of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, which includes, in its definition of
freedom of conscience, the right to change one's faith.But Britain's mighty response has been left to one of Mr Straw's juniors at the Foreign Office, Kim Howells. Mr Howells has sought "urgent clarification" from Kabul.
It may provide Mr Howells with some of the clarification that he needs to point out that Mr Rahman's case was predictable. Islamic law (sharia) is enshrined in the new Afghan constitution. All the four schools of law in the majority Sunni Islam agree that the penalty for "apostasy" - abandoning one's Muslim faith - must be death. One states: "When a person who has reached puberty and is sane voluntarily apostasises from Islam, he deserves to be killed" and recommends that, when he is killed, he should be "neither given a bath, nor any funeral prayer". Much the same applies in Shia Islam.
There have been cases comparable to Mr Rahman's in, among others, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Sudan (in Sudan, one Christian convert had his fingernails pulled out and a sack filled with red chillies pulled over his head while in prison); and even in many Muslim countries where sharia is not the law of the land, such as Pakistan or Egypt, punishments against apostates are often meted out unofficially, unpunished. Some are killed; many are imprisoned, attacked, and robbed of property and family.
Mr Rahman's case arose, in fact, because, having been refused asylum in the West, he returned home to his children. His wife's father, wanting the custody of the children, which is always given to Muslims against apostates, told the Afghan authorities about his son-in-law's conversion. Mr Rahman was found with incriminating evidence - a Bible.
The reason, it seems, why Muslims want apostates killed is not just outrage at abandoning what they regard as the truth. It is because they see it as a kind of treason. Islam thinks it wrong to separate the government of a nation from the rule of faith. Indeed, the only nation whose ultimate validity it recognises is what it calls "the Muslim nation". Changing your faith is considered as much a threat to order and society as secretly working for the KGB was for us in the Cold War.
What this means is that there can be no equality, or even safety, for other religions, let alone for atheists, in a sharia-based Muslim society. The best that can be hoped for is the second-class, protected status for Christians and Jews, rather like the rights of black tribes under apartheid in South Africa, which is called "dhimmi". Dhimmis have inferior rights, and have to pay a special tax. What is out of the question is conversion.
There are, nowadays, many Muslims who do not agree with this ferocious intolerance. The Council for American-Islamic Relations has issued a statement saying that the Koran does not demand such punishments. Some in our own Muslim Council of Britain agree. A clutch of moderate Muslims who had a private meeting with the Prince of Wales about this last year told him that they regretted the penalty. They also said, however, that they were not going to speak out against it in public.
So it seems that, if we are to wait for most Muslim leaders to move away from a view that has prevailed for most of their religion's history, we shall have to wait a long time.
This presents some problems for the leaders of the free world. Can they possibly tolerate such punishments in countries that they help protect - such as Afghanistan and Iraq (whose new constitution also accords a special place to Islam) - or even in countries with which they are closely allied?
The Charter of Fundamental Rights that the European Union is trying to foist on us all forbids the extradition of anyone to a country where he may face the death penalty, even where the trial follows due process and the offence is one which we would recognise.
Might Britain end up in a situation where we could not extradite a serial killer to America, but would permit one of the Afghans we are protecting to be judicially killed because he had converted to Christianity?
And is all well closer to home? Our Government's policy of giving much greater help to conservative Muslim leaders in Britain than to reformist ones means that our own fellow citizens who want to abandon Islam face persecution. In Jack Straw's Blackburn constituency, which contains roughly 25,000 Muslims, I wonder how free they feel to pop into Jack's local church without reprisals.
The disparity between official sensitivity to the slightest offence that might be given to Muslims and the indifference to the plight of those who want to follow our own majority religion is now gross.
I think I know how the case of Abdul Rahman will be "solved". President Karzai of Afghanistan has indicated that he will not be killed. The way out seems to be that he will be declared insane, and insanity, even under sharia, excuses you from death. He will then spend the rest of his days incarcerated, probably in conditions that don't bear thinking about, and Kim Howells and Jack Straw will feel that the matter has been "urgently clarified".
I do not know whether Mr Rahman is insane. It is reported that he suffers from depression, which would not be surprising in one who has suffered 16 years of persecution. But the idea that dissenters from the prevailing ideology can be labelled mad is one that totalitarian regimes, such as Soviet Russia, have found convenient.
Actually, it goes back a long way. When St Paul appeared before the Roman governor of Caesarea, Festus, accused of blasphemy and sedition by the Jews, he expounded his beliefs. Festus then said: "Paul, thou art beside thyself; much learning doth make thee mad." Paul replied: "I am not mad, most noble Festus; but speak the words of truth and soberness."
The position of the Romans in Caesarea was roughly analogous to that of the British and Americans in Afghanistan today. They killed Paul in the end.
Isambard Wilkinson in
Islamabad Filed: 25/03/2006
President Hamid
Karzai of Afghanistan is reported to have given
assurances that an Afghan convert to Christianity will not face the
death sentence for apostasy.Mr Karzai is under growing pressure from his western allies to resolve the case of Abdul Rahman.
Mr Rahman was arrested last week for converting to Christianity from Islam 16 years ago and could face the death penalty if he refuses to become a Muslim again.
The case prompted expressions of concern from President George W Bush and his secretary for state, Condoleezza Rice, as well as Britain, Germany, the United Nations and the EU.
Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, said that Mr Karzai had assured her that Mr Rahman would not be sentenced to death.
The Canadian government, which has also been in touch with Mr Karzai, said he had promised that Mr Rahman would not be executed. A presidential spokesman in Kabul declined to comment.
The case is a difficult one for Mr Karzai, who has to be seen by his allies as a moderniser but who cannot too hastily brush off the views of Afghanistan's many conservatives.
Mr Rahman told a preliminary court hearing last week that he had converted while helping Afghan refugees in Pakistan.
Diplomats in Kabul said the government was searching for a way to drop the case. On Wednesday the authorities said he would undergo psychological examinations to see whether he was fit to stand trial.
A judicial official said that Mr Rahman's family informed on him after a dispute involving the custody of his two daughters.
Most religious and political figures in the country said the government should ensure that Islamic law was enforced.
"He should be executed," said Sadullah Abu Aman, a cleric and a member of parliament from the northern Badakhshan province.
"The West should not interfere," he said
"It would be better to get no aid or military help from the West for 100 years than accept this affront."
See also
The civil war at the heart of Islam
Two sides to the coin
Riots kill fourteen in Afghan jail
June 2003 Observations on the new terrorism - Foreign Affairs Committee