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In his first public comment since Abdul Rahman was freed and allowed to flee to safety in Italy, Afghan President Hamid Karzai says that his country's judiciary made the right decision when Mr Rahman was ordered released. Not all of his countrymen agree, however.
[H]is release — for which no legal justification was provided at the time — angered many conservative Afghans, who had demanded he be punished under Islamic law. Some clerics accused the government of caving in to Western pressure.
"We are very happy that our court, thank God, was not influenced by sentiments, nor was its ruling based on sentiments," Karzai told judges and clerics during a speech at a religious gathering in Kabul.
The chief justice seems to disagree with that assessment.
Chief Justice Fazl Hadi Shinwari did not refer to the convert case, but he told the gathering Islamic laws were being ignored in Afghanistan and some government officials were not upholding Islamic values.
A commentator writing in The Michigan Review thinks the whole episode raises deeply disturbing questions for Western policy in Afghanistan and, by implication, throughout the Muslim world. On the positive side, it was good to see Canada, the United States, and much of Europe speak loudly and with one voice in support of Abdul Rahman's religious freedom. But, on the down side, it is disheartening to realise that, despite the West's expending millions of dollars and vast military resources to build democracy in Afghanistan, the vast majority of Afghans refuse to accept the rights and freedoms that accompany liberal democracy.
[E]ven the court’s decision was not enough to guarantee safety from an Afghan lynch mob. On March 26, Prime Minister Berlusconi of Italy announced that Rahman would be accepted into Italy for protection. Again, it is comforting to see European countries, who typically kowtow to the fundamentalist Muslim crowd (see France), stand up for a courageous man of faith.
It does make you wonder, however, just how often will the West have to rescue the Arab world from itself. The entire West is eager to see the region move into the 21st century. . . . Every time an Abdul Rahman is persecuted for his faith, however, the American resolve erodes a little bit more, the desire to cut and run is intensified. How this will end, no one can hope to guess. But it is without a doubt that public support of our strategy in the Arab world will fade quickly if Afghanistan, our “shining success,” refuses to support minority rights. I hoped to end this article with a solution to the problems revealed in the Abdul Rahman case, but I’m not sure if there is one.
President Bush has made many stirring statements on the transforming power of freedom. In his second inaugural address, for example, the president said, “There is only one force of history that can break the reign of hatred and resentment . . . that is the force of human freedom.” At the time, I thought that sounded great; now I'm not so sure. It’s true that much good has been done in Afghanistan: life for the average Afghan is better today than it was under the Taliban. Still, high-sounding sentiments about the freedom’s power to smash hatred seem naïve in light of the Rahman affair.
It is also increasingly evident that most Muslims, even those who say they are opposed to terrorism, view non-Muslims as second-class citizens who should acquiesce to Islamic doctrine and law–by force, if necessary. It's called dhimmitude.
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