The very idea that a person could literally be put to death for converting from one faith tradition to another is a human-rights nightmare. But from a purely political perspective, the fate of Abdur Rahman may prove to be a different kind of problem for the Bush White House.
The Bush administration stepped up pressure Thursday on Afghanistan’s government to free a man who could be sentenced to death for converting from Islam to Christianity, a case that is further heightening tensions between the West and the Islamic world.
A day after President Bush expressed his concern, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called Afghan President Hamid Karzai and urged him “in the strongest terms” not to punish Abdur Rahman, a 41-year-old medical aid worker. Rahman faces trial in an Islamic court after it was disclosed in a civil child custody case with his wife that he had converted to Christianity 16 years ago.
Sharia, or Islamic law, considers converts to be apostates, and calls for the death penalty unless they convert back to Islam.
There was some talk this week that Rahman would be deemed unfit to stand trial, and thus avoid execution, but according to the NYT, the judge presiding over the prosecution does not plan to end the ongoing trial and he expects to rule in the case in the next several days. The Times added:
For Mr. Bush, who finds support for his war effort in Iraq waning, the case could further alienate his political base among those in the Christian right, who have already accused the administration of putting too little pressure on Afghan officials.
That’s putting it mildly.
The Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins, a leading religious right player, was on MSNBC last night, summarizing the right’s take on the controversy.
“Their constitution and the wording of giving deference to Sharia law is very similar to what is in the Iraqi constitution…. The resolve of the American people will not long stand if they know that they are giving their sons and daughters to die for just changing the names of regimes.”
It’s a fair point. I don’t know if Perkins and the GOP’s religious-right base would be equally worked up were it not for the fact that Rahman is a Christian convert, but motivations aside, the argument is not without merit.
The White House has said, as recently as yesterday, that the Afghan Constitution protects the “freedom of religion,” and the Rahman prosecution is inconsistent with the nation’s laws. That, unfortunately, isn’t true.
On several previous occasions, the [United States Commission on International Religious Freedom] has raised concern that the Afghan constitution’s failure to include adequate guarantees of freedom of religion and expression for members of the country’s majority Muslim community could lead to unjust criminal accusations of apostasy and blasphemy. With no guarantee of the right to religious freedom for all individuals, together with a judicial system instructed to enforce Islamic principles and Islamic law, the door is open for a harsh, unfair, or even abusive interpretation of religious orthodoxy to be officially imposed…
For that matter, the Times noted that the Afghan Constitution “leaves certain crimes to be handled by religious judges,” and one of them is “converting from Islam to another religion.”
Right now, it seems the far-right GOP base is the most vocal about their concerns in the Rahman case, but this need not be ideological. The Bush administration drove the Taliban from power, vowing to support a free, democratic country that would stand as a key U.S. ally in the region. After the president shifted gears to Iraq, Afghanistan slipped badly — opium production bolsters the national economy, the Taliban is expanding its base of power, and the “democratic” government is tolerating a trial that could execute a man for changing his faith.
This is the flourishing democracy the Bush administration has championed.