Hi Sirloin,
Originally posted by SirLoin
Islam isn't the problem..Religeous Idealism is.
Let's think about that seriously...
Here we have the plight of a man, Abdul Rahman, who was working with a Christian relief organization, providing relief, assistance, and hope to countless people, who after being able to assess the claims of Christianity and watch how committed Christians live out their faith, converted. Certainly all of this required a considerable amount of "Religious Idealism" and yet in what way was any of this religious idealism harmful or evil? In what ways did Rahman's religious idealism make the world a darker place?
On the other hand, we have an ideology that says that because he converted, Rahman must die. That ideology has contributed little or nothing to alleviate the suffering of the people there who embrace it and has been a force for little but evil and oppression in that particular country and now it is proclaiming that a good man must die, merely because he loves Christ and desires to live a life of service to him. This whole thing reminds me of the scene from Bunyan's classic
Pilgrim's Progress in which Apollyon meets Christian on the road and insists that he return to his service and worship, or suffer death.
Have we really become so weak and indecisive that we can no longer perceive such a clear cut case of light vs. darkness? To say its all the fault of religious idealism rather than a particular ideology is rather like looking at the Holocaust and saying "the problem isn't Nazism, it's political idealism" or viewing the patriots at Lexington and the Khmer Rouge as exactly the same because they both took up arms against their current governments.
Thankfully, many people, even committed secularists, have realized exactly how absurd it is for the Western Democracies to be fighting to support the supression of the religious freedom they hold dear.
ABDUL RAHMAN, a 41-year-old Afghan, was a Muslim for 25 years before he began working for an international Christian group helping his fellow countrymen in Pakistan. Within a couple of years he had converted to Christianity.
Fourteen years later, the decision may cost him his life....
Mr Rahman’s case is shaping up as a trial of strength between Afghanistan’s religious conservatives and reformers. “The constitution says Islam is the religion of Afghanistan, yet it also mentions the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and Article 18 specifically forbids this kind of recourse,” one human rights expert said in Kabul last night. “It really highlights the problem the judiciary faces.”
News of his plight is likely to cause outrage in predominantly Christian countries such as Britain and America, whose troops are fighting to free Afghanistan from the religious zealotry of the Taleban.
The Bishop of Rochester, the Right Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, who leads the Church of England’s dialogue with Islam, told The Times: “I’m amazed that the constitution that has been agreed in post-Taleban Aghanistan under the very eyes of the international community should allow this kind of thing to take place — for a person to be arrested for having been converted 14 years ago and to be threatened with execution simply for his beliefs.
“The British Army in Afghanistan is losing soldiers there through injury and death. Is the Army there to uphold this kind of thing? I thought we were there to promote democracy and freedom.”
Alan Simpson, Labour MP for Nottingham South, told The Times: “We are asked to believe that in Afghanistan we are defending a more secular and democratic state when in fact the likes of Abdul Rahman face the death penalty. What sort of democracy are we defending? All reports suggest that the Taleban are coming in through the back door and their views through the front door. Hamid Karzai (the Afghan President) needs to be told that this absurdity must stop.”
