Magic Statistics

In a recent interview, theologian José Morales was asked whether many Europeans are candidates for conversion to Islam. He thinks not.

My feeling is that it cannot attract many real converts. The notion of converting to Islam has little to do with what Christians mean by converting. Europeans who become Muslims do so, broadly speaking, out of a desire for experimentation and a hankering after exotic experiences. The fact that Islam can attract people in Europe is due basically to the crisis in Christian churches, especially amongst Protestants and Anglicans. There have been two or three thousand Spanish converts and most of them come from the radical left or from greens who have embraced ecologism as a kind of ideology. It is not really a religious phenomenon.

Dr Morales, author of Muslims In Europe, teaches theology at University of Navarra, Spain.

Read the whole thing.

via Ignatius Insight Scoop.

Senior Muslims clerics in Afghanistan say they don’t care what the government or courts decide: Abdul Rahman must die. If he is released on grounds of insanity, as was mooted yesterday, they will stir up street mobs to kill him anyway.

Senior Muslim clerics said Thursday that Rahman must be executed and if the government caves into Western pressure and frees him they will incite people to "pull him into pieces." Four senior clerics interviewed by The Associated Press in their mosques in Kabul agreed Rahman deserved to be killed for his conversion.

"He is not crazy. He went in front of the media and confessed to being a Christian," said Hamidullah, chief cleric at Haji Yacob Mosque. "The government is scared of the international community. But the people will kill him if he is freed."

That Hamidullah may be dangerous, but he didn’t get to be "chief cleric" at that mosque by being stupid. It seems clear that the suggestion that Mr Rahman is too crazy to stand trial is a ploy to avoid an international incident over his execution for leaving Islam. Darn right the Afghan government is "scared of the international community". President Hamid Karzai yesterday received a personal telephone call from Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and today he got an earful from US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Now the European Union is starting to pay attention. 

Austria's foreign minister on Thursday said the European Union would do all it could to save the life of an Afghan man on trial for converting from Islam to Christianity. Conviction could mean death.

"We will leave nothing untried to protect the basic rights of Abdul Rahman and save his life," said Ursula Plassnik, whose country currently holds the rotating EU presidency, in a statement.

Thus, the alarm among militant Muslims that Mr Rahman may actually walk free. That won't happen if they get their hands on him.

"He is not mad. The government is playing games. The people will not be fooled," said Abdul Raoulf, cleric at Herati Mosque. "This is humiliating for Islam. … Cut off his head."

Did I say "militant Muslims"? Apparently not:

Raoulf is considered a moderate cleric in Afghanistan. He was jailed three times for criticizing the Taliban's policies before the hard-line regime was ousted by US-led forces in 2001.

If that guy's a moderate, what do Muslim extremists have to say about the Rahman case? I suppose they favour killing him right now, before the judicial procedure (such as it is) has run its course. "Sentence first, verdict later: off with his head!" Be that as it may, if Mr Rahman is to survive an acquittal or dismissal, some Western country will have to offer him asylum—and be prepared to use military force to get him out of there, just as that Danish Muslim MP suggested yesterday.

via titusonenine.

Previous related posts:

• Stephen Harper reassured by Afgan President Karzai
• Abdul Rahman "doesn't talk like a normal person"
• Danish Muslim says troops should free Rahman
• Abdul Rahman faces execution for Christian faith
• Why are we in Afghanistan?