Islam or Death
March 25th, 2006 by Wyatt
This story really amazes me. The Afghan government is seriously discussing the execution of a man for the crime of accepting Christ as his savior. I’m amazed at the bravery of the man to declare his faith proudly and openly knowing it might be his death sentence. I’m enraged by the idea that a government that depends on our goodwill would consider this at all.
I really don’t know if Islam as a faith is fundamentally broken. However, this situation sure makes it look like there are some deep problems with the idea of Islam living in peace alongside other faiths.
Eugene Volokh made at great point in his recent post on this issue. The key point is here:
The striking thing about the Abdul Rahman prosecution — in which an Afghanistan court is considering whether to execute Rahman because he converted from Islam to Christianity — is how Establishment the prosecution is. The case is before an official Afghani court. The death sentence is, to my knowlege, authorized by official Afghani law. The New York Times reports that the prosecutor, an Afghan government official, “called Mr. Rahman ‘a microbe’ who ‘should be killed.’” The case is in a country which is close to the West, and is presumably under at least some special influence from Western principles (whether as a matter of conviction or of governmental self-interest).
We’re not talking about some rogue terrorist group, or even the government of Iran, which is deliberately and strongly oppositional to the West. We’re talking about a country that we’re trying to set up as something of a model of democracy and liberty for the Islamic world. And yet the legal system is apparently seriously considering executing someone for nothing more than changing his religion.
This is telling evidence, it seems to me, that there is something very wrong in Islam today, and not just in some lunatic terrorist fringe. Doubtless many, I would hope most, Muslims would not endorse executing converts. But a strand of the religion, and a strand that is not far from the levers of political power in at least some countries, does seem to endorse such a position. This is deeply dangerous, most obviously to residents of countries in which radical Islamism has broad support, but also to residents of Western countries as well.
We cannot afford to ignore this issue as we go about rebuilding Afghanistan and Iraq. This is antithetical to the very foundations of our republic.