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Bush Troubled by Afghan Christian Facing Death- WHY???

 
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cyrus
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 26, 2006 1:01 pm    Post subject: Bush Troubled by Afghan Christian Facing Death- WHY??? Reply with quote

Practical ISLAM 101 Lesson - Why U.S. Bush Admin Agreed With Afghan Backward Islamofascists Constitution?
Who is Responsible for This Bad Decision in Bush Admin?
Who was Responsible for reviewing Afghan Constitution and Approved it?


cyrus wrote:

Bush Troubled by Afghan Christian Facing Death
By Scott Stearns
White House
22 March 2006

Stearns report - Download 177k
Listen to Stearns report

http://www.voanews.com/english/2006-03-22-voa57.cfm


President Bush
President Bush says he is deeply troubled by the case of an Afghan man who could be put to death for converting from Islam to Christianity. Mr. Bush says he will try and resolve the issue diplomatically.

President Bush says he looks forward to talking with authorities in Kabul about the case of Abdul Rahman, 41, who under the country's Islamic law, could be executed if he refuses to return to the Islamic faith.

"We have got influence in Afghanistan and we are going to use it to remind them that there are universal values," said Mr. Bush. "It is deeply troubling that a country we helped liberate would hold a person to account, because they chose a particular religion over another."

The president says he expects Afghanistan will honor what he calls the universal principle of freedom and believes the problem can be solved by working closely with Afghan officials.

Asked about the issue during a question and answer session in the state of West Virginia, Mr. Bush said he shares the concerns that many Americans have about the case.


Abdul Rahman
The United Nations has joined the United States, Canada, Germany, and Italy in expressing concern about Rahman.

Afghan Supreme Court officials say he will be examined to determine if he is mentally fit to stand trial. If he is not, they say the case may be dropped.

Rahman was arrested two weeks ago after his parents told the police about his conversion to Christianity. Under Afghan law, if he does not revert to Islam before a second court appearance sometime in the next two months, he could receive the death penalty.


Last edited by cyrus on Wed Apr 19, 2006 9:41 pm; edited 1 time in total
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cyrus
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PostPosted: Wed Mar 29, 2006 3:17 pm    Post subject: The New Roman Lions Reply with quote

The New Roman Lions

Apostasy laws don't just threaten men like Abdul Rahman; they also threaten Middle Eastern democratization.
by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross
03/29/2006

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/007oxwjf.asp?pg=2

THE FIRST GENERATION OF CHRISTIANS faced severe persecution under the Roman Empire because of their refusal to bow down to the goddess Rome and the emperor. For Abdul Rahman, a 41-year-old Afghani man who was charged with a capital offense last week for converting from Islam to Christianity, post-Taliban Afghanistan might as well have been ancient Rome. Although Abdul Rahman was ultimately freed after massive international pressure was brought to bear on Afghan president Hamid Karzai's government, the case was dismissed because of alleged evidentiary questions: the anti-apostasy laws under which he was charged remain in place. It is only a matter of time before a similar apostasy case--either in Afghanistan or elsewhere in the Middle East--again captures the public imagination in the West.

Middle Easterners who leave the Islamic faith have faced serious persecution for decades. Many have been killed, either by the state or by their former co-religionists. But the Abdul Rahman case marked the first time in recent memory that this practice has attracted significant attention. The issue extends far beyond Afghanistan and poses a problem not just for converts from Islam, but for all those who have invested in a strategy of peace through democratization.


A BROAD CONSENSUS EXISTS through much of the Islamic world that apostates from the faith deserve to be killed. This consensus could be glimpsed in Abdul Rahman's case, where the judge, Ansarullah Mawlavezada, said, "In this country we have the perfect constitution. It is Islamic law and it is illegal to be a Christian and it should be punished." Even the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, expected to take a more moderate stance, called for Abdul Rahman's punishment, claiming that he clearly violated Islamic law.

But apostasy laws stretch far beyond Afghanistan. At least 14 Islamic countries make conversion out of Islam illegal. The crime is punishable by death in at least eight of these states, either through explicit anti-apostasy laws or the broader offense of blasphemy.

Official proceedings against those who convert out of Islam are rare, at least in part because most of those who leave Islam choose to keep it secret. More often the government looks the other way while irate citizens mete out their own punishment. In July Paul Marshall, a senior fellow at Freedom House's Center for Religious Freedom, estimated that dozens of apostates from Islam had been killed throughout the world in the previous year. Bolstering Marshall's estimate, the Compass Direct News Agency was able to identify 23 expatriate Christian workers who were killed in the Muslim world between 2002 and July 2005.


BUT THE RIPPLES spread beyond the obvious victims. While a large number of elections were held throughout the Middle East over the past year, we may be seeing a rise in illiberal democracies in the region. Hamas's victory in the Palestinian Authority and the Muslim Brotherhood's massive parliamentary gains in Egypt are suggestive of this trend.

The reason for the rise of illiberal democracy is the lack of true alternatives. The only safe way to criticize most Middle Eastern governments is from a fundamentalist direction, so citizens are forced to protest the ruling regimes by voting for the Islamist opposition. Thus, in our promotion of voting, we may be unwittingly empowering our enemies.

The way to create true alternatives in the long term is by bolstering liberal concepts such as freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion. Thus, while the attempt to put Abdul Rahman to death can be viewed as one man's struggle, it is more properly understood as a small part of a larger battle--the battle for Middle Eastern liberalization--that affects us all.



UNFORTUNATELY, prior to the media firestorm that accompanied Abdul Rahman's prosecution, the Western contribution to this battle wasn't limited to ignoring the plight of converts out of Islam. Some Westerners actively provided a platform for those who countenance the harsh treatment of apostates.

For example, the Cumberland Law Review recently published an essay by Ali Khan, a law professor at Washburn University. In his piece, Khan suggested that Islam can be seen as a form of intellectual property, and Muslims as "trustees" who have vowed to protect their faith's "knowledge-based assets." With this analogy in mind, Khan argued that apostasy should be punished because it


is aimed at dishonoring the protected knowledge of Islam. The murtad (apostate) is akin to a corporate insider who discloses the secrets he has undertaken to protect; he is akin to a state official who turns traitor and joins the ranks of the enemy; he is akin to a custodian who destroys the very monument he was safeguarding on behalf of the community. All legal systems punish insiders who breach their trusts; Islam punishes murtaddun [apostasy] too, sometimes severely.

This ugly rationalization for the harsh treatment of converts from Islam was never rebutted in the law review's pages. Nor has there been any sustained rebuttal of Syed Mumtaz Ali, the president of the Canadian Society of Muslims. Mumtaz Ali emerged as a respected public figure while leading the drive for an Islamic arbitration tribunal in Ontario, despite the fact that an essay on apostasy published under his name frankly--and favorably--quotes from a hadith of the Prophet Muhammad that states: "Whosoever changes his religion, kill him with the sword."

THE ABDUL RAHMAN CASE presents an opportunity for the West, but only if we refuse to view this as an isolated incident. When Abdul Rahman awaited trial, Representative Tom Lantos wrote a letter to Hamid Karzai stating: "In a country where soldiers from all faiths, including Christianity, are dying in defense of your government, I find it outrageous that Mr. Rahman is being prosecuted and facing the death penalty for converting to Christianity." Lantos was correct, but he did not go far enough. This is not only an outrage in countries being defended by Western soldiers. The unjustifiable punishment of apostates from Islam is an outrage wherever it occurs.


Daveed Gartenstein-Ross is a counterterrorism consultant and attorney.
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PostPosted: Wed Mar 29, 2006 4:10 pm    Post subject: Italy Welcomes Man Who Fled Afghanistan Reply with quote

Quote:

Italy Welcomes Man Who Fled Afghanistan

http://news.yahoo.com/fc/world/afghanistan

AP - 2 hours, 28 minutes ago
ROME - Italy granted asylum Wednesday to an Afghan who faced the death penalty for converting from Islam to Christianity, and Premier Silvio Berlusconi said the man was in the care of the Interior Ministry after arriving in Italy earlier in the day. Abdul Rahman "is already in Italy. I think he arrived overnight," Berlusconi said, declining to release more details. Rahman's jailing in Afghanistan inspired an appeal by Pope Benedict XVI to Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai and efforts by the United Nations to find a country to take him.


stefania wrote:
Condoleezza Rice's Opening Statement

January 18, 2005
The Associated Press
Houston Chronicle
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/2997586

To be sure, in our world there remain outposts of tyranny and America stands with oppressed people on every continent ... in Cuba, and Burma, and North Korea, and Iran, and Belarus, and Zimbabwe. The world should apply what Natan Sharansky calls the ``town square test'': if a person cannot walk into the middle of the town square and express his or her views without fear of arrest, imprisonment, or physical harm, then that person is living in a fear society, not a free society. We cannot rest until every person living in a ``fear society'' has finally won their freedom.



Afghan, Iraq and Iran Free Society Test Case Failure
It is shame that after 3 years in Afghanistan we have not been able to establish FREE Society . Why have we allowed Afghan clerics to interfere in everyday life of Afghan people?

When United States liberate a country from Evil forces of Islamofascists and Fascists, the US forces and US government must apply US laws, separation of church and state … without any consideration for backward dominating Islamofascists culture during the transition period.

During transition period the United States should not give choice to broken societies who lost most of their past elites like Afghans society (in past 27 years great majority of Afghan Elites and educated have left the country or killed in civil wars) to decide in the name of state sovereignty until we establish security and Free Society. For transition period we should assign fine respected American General in charge of liberated region during transition as we did in Germany after second world war …..
Otherwise we are wasting our military resources….
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