To Kill or Not to Kill
Today I was reading what Al Arabiya visitors wrote about the story of Afghan man who might be executed for converting to Christianity. Many of the comments I read made me want to vomit, others were breezes of rationality.
I chose a few of these comments. I included the good, the bad, the ugly, and the very ugly.
"We hope that rationality supercedes the implementation of laws that contradict innate human traits. There is no other option besides freedom of religion for all. Only then will the religion be for God"
"The missionaries use the poverty of the people to spread their faith. By the way, the power of their religion is short lasting because it is abrogated" (BP: Idiot, the guy converted 16 years ago and he was outside Afghanistan)
"There is no compulsion in religion...you have your religion, I have mine" (BP: That's a verse in the Quran)
"I am a female medical student. Converting out of Islam is forbidden" (BP: a medical student and she think that way! God help us!)
"I hope other Islamic nations will learn from this nation (Afghanistan) how to apply Islamic law"
"Fear God Al Arabiya..and cease such useless news stories" (BP: yea yea, the life of an innocent man is useless to you idiot! Ops, I forgot, he's a dirty apostate!)
"If I were in his shoes, I would have pretended that I returned to islam then escaped and practiced my faith somewhere else"
"I was not surprised when I read that. Bush and his ilk are waging a crusade and this is an expected outcome. Coverting people to Christianity occurs in poor areas....I hope Muslim youth will rise up and carry out charity work in order to fight Christian missionaries."
"Once again Islam is being portrait as the religion of sword. Let Allah judge him. Show mercy and many many others will join our religion. Kill him and many many more will resent being Muslims and the enemy of Islam will have the most effective ammunition to attack our religion." (BP: thank you for having a good mind) ...
The Taliban Live On
The Taliban regime ended in Afghanistan but it seems their legacy is still there. An Afghan man might face the death penalty after he committed a "henious" crime. He converted to Christianity - 16 years ago. Abdul Rahman appeared in court last week and his case is being widely monitored by the local media in Afghanistan.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is what I meant when I said that ballot boxes and happy voters casting ballots are not reminiscent with democracy. A country that doesn't adopt the values of liberal democracy can never be called democratic even if it held 365 elections in a year. I'll give anyone a million dollars if s/he dug in my blog archives and came up with a post where I labeled what happened in Afghanistan, Iraq, and several other countries in the Middle East as "democracy". I have used other terms such as "better state" and "better condition". [my emphasis - aa]
Bulletin from Stratfor (subscription service):
Italy will move at the "highest level" to save the life of Abdur Rahman, a convert to Christianity who an Afghan court said may face the death penalty if he does not become a Muslim again, the Italian Foreign Ministry said March 21. Separately, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said he was deeply concerned by the situation, and would intervene if necessary.
Go read Big Pharaoh's full posts at the links.
