Is this what our troops fought for?
03.20.06 (10:33 pm) [edit]Abdul Rahman converted to Christianity 16 years ago. He is an Afghani living in the New Afghanistan-- liberated from years of Soviet/Talibanic oppression.
Big deal, right?
Well, yeah, it is, because this man is going to trial and could possibly be executed for it. You see, though the Afghan constitution calls for freedom of religion, it establishes that Islam is the state religion and for a Muslim to convert to a heathen religion, under the Islamic law of Sharia, that is a crime punishable by death.
So there seems to be a freedom of religion, unless you convert from Islam to anything else.
Rahman is unrepentant about his conversion, even in the face of death, and that is commendable. But we have to wonder-- is this what we fought for after 9/11?
The enemy then, as it is now, is Islamic extremism. The kind of fanaticism that led to OBL and 9/11. But we liberated Afghanistan, right? We tried to get them to understand the consequences of extremism. Yet here we are watching as a state gets extreme over the fact that one man chooses to believe in his or her own way. It is kind of depressing to say the least.
Am I implicitly saying, then, that truth is relative? Not at all. What I'm saying is that if Islam is truth, then it should have no problem letting this man explore Christianity, for he will come back to the truth. All men seek the truth.
If this man dies, however, I have to wonder what the US will be seeking in the war on terror.
posted by: sixthsense (reply)
post date: 03.21.06 (11:59 am)
Welcome to the Islamic world.