People have probably heard that Abdul Rahman is facing the death penalty in Afghanistan for "apostasy", having converted to Christianity about 15 years ago (I've heard both 14 and 16 so am splitting the difference.) Rahman converted while working with a Christian aid group in Pakistan. He lived mostly in Germany until 4 years ago, when he returned to Afghanistan following the overthrow of the Taliban government.
In January 2004, Bush praised Afghanistan for their constitution which "talks about freedom of religion", although at the time the US Commission on Religious Liberty warned that the constitution explicitly instated Islam as a state religion and barred religious freedom. More recently, just a few weeks ago Bush praised "liberated" Afghanistan as a Muslim country that respects religious freedom. (He also, incidentally, praised Afghanistan for its progress on women's rights, despite the fact that women continue to be imprisoned for having been raped, that rape is only a crime for the woman and that Bush has never met a women's right he did not oppose.)
So maybe this explains why Christians are so silent. Bush, to be sure, has expressed "concern" but no more. Where are Jerry Falwell? Pat Robertson? Bill Donohue? Bill O'Falafel? Pat Dobson?
They are so ready to scream about a "war on Christmas" when a store clerk says "happy holidays", to scream that Christians are being "persecuted" when science and not bible is taught in science classes and gays have any rights, to scream that Hollywood "hates Christians" because a movie depicting Jesus being tortured did not win an Academy Award. Where are they? Too busy trying to boycott Ford for advertising in the Advocate? Too busy trying to outlaw abortion to worry that their own religion is outlawed on pain of death?
Interestingly, the Council on American-Islamic Relations has denounced the sentence, saying religion is a personal decision that should not be coerced.

I can answer your question with a simple response: they are silent because we're talking about brown, not white, people. I mean, Jesus was white, correct?

Interestingly enough, it was his own family who turned him in to the police.

Despite Islam's injunctions for 'tolerance' of other religions there are no places of worship (of any other religion) in many middle easstern countries that are available to the common people. Most Christian services - in many asian countries - have to be held in secret.

In Afghanistan there is one single Christian church that is open in the capital: only foreigners are allowed to go there.

Christians and even Jews are tolerated as long as they do not attempt to openly celebrate their religion or attempt to teach their religion.

If Abdul Rahman had been born a Christian for example then he would be fine: it was the act of Conversion from Islam that is seen as illegal by the sh'ria courts.

One of the things you quickly find as LOT of very dark places in the world where people not only do not share our views on farness, justice, or government by the people; there are way too many places where those who are in power (social, political, economic, and religious elites) are determined to enforce sometimes brutal servitude of the masses to maintain their position.

But then, we of course do not have anything remotely like that at home in the USA do we?

In truth dozens of american religious groups have tried to protest the proceedings both through the US State Dept (where they have been politely told that the current US policy toward Afghanistan is more important) or through international aid agencies (which the US gov't has blocked at every turn, because it might upset relations with or be seen as weakening the current Afghan gov't).

So much for Bush's call for a renewal of human rights policies in foreign affairs. But of course the important point was that it sounded good. If you believed him in the first place.

R

IT, I can believe that religious groups have tried to protest through the state department, but compare that to the "war on Christmas" when the best known Christian "leaders" were all over TV, writing op-eds, guests on talk radio. Why don't we see Falwell et all on CNN, on Fox, on MSNBC?
Because supporting Bush is more important?
Because their real agenda is not even religion but anti-civil rights?

Oh please Ms DB, Don't get me wrong.

I agree with you 110%.

I think it's absolutely disgusting.

On a related note, so that all may not simply accept that the gov'ts we are supporting are all sweetness and light:

Shia Death Squads Target Iraqi Gays
BY DOUG IRELAND (gay city news)

"Three Years On, Americans Ignore Pleas of Repression Even Worse than Saddam’s

Following a death-to-gays fatwa issued last October by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, death squads of the Badr Corps have been systematically targeting gay Iraqis for persecution and execution, gay Iraqis say. But when they ask for help and protection from U.S. occupying authorities in the Green Zone, the secure area officialdom has carved out within Baghdad, gays Iraqis are met with indifference and derision.

“The Badr Corps is committed to the sexual cleansing of Iraq,” said Ali Hili, a 33-year-old gay Iraqi exile in London who, with some 30 other gay Iraqis who have fled to the United Kingdom, five months ago founded the Abu Nawas Group there to support persecuted gay Iraqis. The group is named for a revered eighth-century classical poet of Arab and Persian descent known throughout Middle East cultures and famous for his poems in praise of same-sex love.

“We believe that the Badr Corps is receiving advice from Iran on how to target gay people,” Hili told Gay City News.

In the Islamic Republic of Iran, the regime of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been carrying out a lethal anti-gay pogrom, notably through entrapment schemes carried out on the Internet. The Badr Corps in Iraq has recently begun to use this tactic to identify and hunt down Iraqi gays.

The well-armed Badr Corps is the military arm of the Iranian-backed Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the powerful Shia group that is the largest political formation in Iraq’s Shia community, and was headquartered in exile in Tehran until Saddam Hussein’s fall. The SCIRI’s Badr Corps is trained and commanded by former Iraqi army officers.

The Ayatollah Sistani, the 77-year-old Iranian-born cleric who is the supreme Shia authority in Iraq, is revered by SCIRI as its spiritual leader. His anti-gay fatwa—available on Sistani’s official Web site—says that “people involved” in homosexuality “should be killed in the worst, most severe way of killing.”

R

How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
Yes, 'n' how many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, 'n' how many times must the cannon balls fly
Before they're forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, 'n' how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, 'n' how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

How many years can a mountain exist
Before it's washed to the sea?
Yes, 'n' how many years can some people exist
Before they're allowed to be free?
Yes, 'n' how many times can a man turn his head,
Pretending he just doesn't see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

Blowin' in the Wind - Bob Dylan

[ March 23, 2006, 02:59 PM: Message edited by: ITJock ]

A man is going to be killed because he became a Christian, yet outrage and contempt are directed not at those who are depriving him of his human rights but at Bush and Falwell, et. al.? With an assertion that the perceived lack of concern is because he's not white (which is questionable even in our color conscious society)?

Something seems to be missing from this discussion.

This event is an outrage. But the outrage is that a government would execute one of its citizens because that person stopped believing in Islam. Our voices should be heard in that arena, just as in other arenas where human rights are being violated. This man doesn't deserve to be merely a means to condemn Bush, Falwell and others, just because it gets tiresome to hear about objections to happy holidays, which indeed it does, or because of the reaction to the choices by the Academy Awards (ironically reminiscent of the reaction when BBM failed to win), or even because of positions Bush has taken on events in Afghanistan. After all, the constitution of Afghanistan was drafted and approved by the people of that country, wasn't it? Intolerance is intolerance, even if it's directed at Christians. And the intolerance of being executed for your beliefs is one we should oppose first and foremost, even in spite of our various political positions.

Perhaps the Christians who live in Muslim countries are not quite the same as the Christians in the West, and therefore they have little essence in common. Interesting that members of the group to which the Christians taken hostage belonged, do not not seem to be willing to give credit to the US military for the rescue of the surviving hostages but rather blames the initial taking of the hostages on the U.S. occupation of Iraq. No GWB Christian.

Well, no he wasn't exactly "white," though that hasn't ever stopped anyone from portraying him that way. He was born in Nazareth; most of the people from there are browner than than they are white....

All, in all, the situation of religious persecution in Afghanistan OR ANYWHERE is disgusting. Bush has spoken out, finally, against this situation, though persecution of Christians (and other religious minorities) happens all over the world, with little public discussion or condemnation.

But then again, as others have said, Bush Ltd. pushed for democracy there, and as in Iraq, the Afghan law enshrines Sharia doctrine and local customs and conventions, which is what the people there wanted, right? So are the US going to force the people there to disregard or overturn the very laws their new democratic system has installed? Well, in this case, I hope so!

Good Hands, you are obviously right that those who would execute a person for his/her religious beliefs deserve the strongest condemnation. However, my point and the point of others is that the spokespeople for this man's religion here in the US are NOT doing that. I see condemnations from US Muslims, from left-leaning blogs, etc but not from Christian "leaders". And the point is that they won't embarrass their "leader" Bush by condemning this atrocity. The one exception is Patrick Buchanan, who has differentiated himself from Bush already.
When there is a bombing or somesuch, we are asked "where are the moderate Muslims?". Well, the moderate Muslims are condemning this penalty but Christian leaders are not. The same leaders who are so quick to scream "persecution" when they are prevented from persecuting others are ignoring real persecution.

Well, I disagree on the point that condemnation would embarass Bush. First off, he and his administration are working to get this man released. While the administration hasn't been doing any screaming and hollering over the death sentence, that's probably the best strategy (diplomatically speaking).

So, given that the Bush administration is working the diplomatic channels to free Rahman, I don't see how it would "embarass" Bush or his people for anyone in this country to speak up and demand his release. It would simply be expressing the same thing the Bushies are working towards, albeit in stronger language.

I think it would be far more embarassing if Rahman is executed. Bush went into Afghanistan to topple the Taliban and replace them with a "better" government. If that better government now allows a man to be executed for converting to a different religion, wouldn't that be an indictment against Bush and his policy of intervention/nation building? That would be an embarassment.

The only embarassment I see is the silence from some Christian leaders. They should be ashamed of themselves.

Edited to add: I should say, the only embarassment I see from the U.S. is the silence from some Christian leaders. I agree with Good Hands that this situation is outrageous, and the Afghan government is ridiculous.

[ March 24, 2006, 04:00 PM: Message edited by: Weaselman ]

One thing I've been wondering about is this: are the Christianist leaders silent because they realize that if they got their way and imposed Christianism (not Christianity, but their extremist version) on the US, we'd in effect end up with a similar society, where non-Christians could be persecuted or ostracized, homosexuals and other sexual minorities could be punished or even killed (as some Christianists have called for), and so on? Are they silent because, ironically enough, they want the same sort of theocratic, quasi-democratic system over here in the US, only substituting Christianism for Islamicism?

Perhaps the parallels between Islamicism and Chritianism (I prefer Fundamentalism to cover both) are beginning to embarass people with true Christian feelings within the Fundamentalist movement.

They also might expose evangelists (propagandists) around the world to even greater danger than they currently face: Religionpolitik.

Northern Virginia Republican congressman Frank R. Wolf usually has something to say about things like this. Here's a link to his website.

Congressman Frank R. Wolf

Unless he's saying that these \"fresh eyes\" should replace the stale ones in the current administration, I'm not sure he's saying anything that will help the situation. And even if the people in this article replaced the current ones, Iraq policy would see small change.

Afghan court drops case against Christian convert. It's a relief to hear this, even if the reasons given have nothing to do with freedom of religion, which ought to be enshrined in the new 'democratic' Afghanistan. If the man had been executed, surely this would have made the new government look no better than its Taliban predecessors.

The US was not the only country involved in the rescue of the Christian Peacemaker hostages; Britain and Canada had a major role as well. However, your comment remains valid, as it appears the group made a point of omitting the Americans in its statement of gratitude. This, along with the death of American hostage Tom Fox, has soured what has otherwise been a happy ending to a terrible ordeal. The story has certainly been prominent here in Canada since it began four months ago, with James Loney and his family being the main focus. It was heartening to hear that many Iraqis and even Palestinians condemned the kidnappings and had voiced strong support for the hostages' release. It was interesting to discover that James Loney appears to be openly gay (see reference to 'my partner Dan'), and yet is obviously a welcome and respected member of a Christian organization (I mention this because there seems to be a tendency on Outsports to generalize about the intolerance and homophobia of Christians).

Sorry, was out of town and couldn't respond early. Thanks for the reply. Just wanted to say, Ms. deB, I did get your point originally when I first read your post. But, at that point, after having written to the Afghan Embassy to protest this violation of human rights and freedom of choice, and then having written to the White House also, I decided to put the condemnation of the decision on here as well. I used this forum even though the focus was on political differences within American politics, since ostensibly the topic was the condemnation of a man to death for exercising his right to choose. Sorry if that took the focus away from the political discussion. I'll pay more attention to that in the future, since we need the political discussions also.

Btw, moderate Muslims should have been the first ones to condemn this.

This decision was made in the name of Islam. Muslims who do not agree with it should condemn it. Just as when killing is done in the name of Christianity, adherents to that faith should be the first to condemn it. The question of "where are the moderate Muslims" is just as valid in this as it was regarding bombings or other terrorist attacks.

[ March 27, 2006, 12:36 PM: Message edited by: Good Hands ]