Aohell

Abdul Rahman, Part II

All right, so the Afghan government has found a way to drop the trial against Abdul Rahman, on grounds he may not have been an Afghan citizen, sane, or both. That makes no difference to the medieval minds that want to put him to death for converting from Islam to Christianity.

Afghan, Shmafghan. If anyone converts from Islam to another religion, some hardliner can insist Sharia be applied and then kill the guy, regardless of his origin. It's also regardless of his status as a refugee, which Mr. Rahman is about to become.

There are voices in Afghanistan rejecting Mr. Rahman be given refugee status. If he was allowed to be a refugee, then anyone wanting a one-way ticket out of Afghanistan could convert to Christianity and get the heck out of the country.

If Paris was worth a mass to Henri IV, imagine what asylum in the West would be worth to a struggling Afghan peasant.

Meanwhile, the Afghans are not happy with Mr. Rahman getting out of the country. In general, they want him dead. Anything less means the government is not respecting Islam in their eyes. As long as Afghanistan remains as medieval as it is, it will never know democracy.

Northern Alliance, Taliban, it's all the same. Nobody wins in Afghanistan, not even the Afghans.