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Afghanistan

Condi: Democracy Will Evolve In Afghanistan

2006-03-27

Afghanistan's prosecution of a man who converted from Islam to Christianity shows how a fledgling democracy struggles to recognize individual rights, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Sunday.

... and how the resident holy men do their best to ignore them.

Afghanistan is "going through one of the most difficult debates that any society goes through, and that is the proper role of religion in the politics of the state," she said.

I don't think they're having a debate about it. I think they've said that anybody who converts from Islam to anything else has to be killed but that their sources of aid and support are bound up with people who have those funny ideas about individual liberty.

Officials in Afghanistan said Abdul Rahman, who faced a possible death sentence for converting from Islam to Christianity, was to be freed after a court on Sunday dismissed the case against him, citing a lack of evidence.

... and not citing his freedom to believe what he damned well pleases.

Rice said she had no independent confirmation, but said that development "would be a very good step forward" if true. "This is an evolutionary process," Rice said on Fox News. "It's a young democracy."

They've made it up to about 714 A.D., but they've still got a long way to go. The question is whether they really want to make the trip...

Afghanistan's U.S.-backed president, Hamid Karzai, has faced mounting foreign pressure to free Rahman. Muslim clerics have called for Rahman to be killed.

That's because they're holy men. It's holy to want to have people killed when they deviate from your straight-and-narrow. They have a blood fetish.

"We, as Americans, know that in democracy, as it evolves, there are difficult issues about state and church, or in this case, state and mosque. But there are difficult issues about the rights of the individual," Rice told CNN's "Late Edition."

... or, in Islamic countries, the lack thereof...

"We're going to stand firm for the principle that religious freedom and freedom of religious conscience need to be upheld, and we are hoping for a favorable resolution in this case," Rice said.
Very good. But, Muslim clerics will always rail against democracy - except where they control a majority vote - because it implies popular sovereignty, while they recognize only their concocted deity ("allah") as sovereign. There was a brief period of Secularism in post colonial Arab speaking entities, but that has washed away.
Rahman was being prosecuted under Afghanistan's Islamic laws for converting 16 years ago while working as a medical aid worker for an international Christian group helping Afghan refugees in Pakistan. Rahman's case represents a "crossroads for their judicial system," said Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan. "Let's hope they make the right decision," he told CNN's "Late Edition." "If they don't, I think there are going to be a great many problems."

I don't think the holy men intend taking any of the roads available to them. They intend to stay precisely where they are. That's because none of the roads available present the option of holy men running the country.

Rice was asked if Christian missionaries from the United States should be encouraged to go to Afghanistan. "I think that Afghans are pleased to get the help that they can get," she told NBC's "Meet the Press."

And I'd guess the holy men would be whipping up the rubes to kill them within hours of their arrival.

Stephen Hadley, President Bush's national security adviser, said on CBS' "Face the Nation" that Afghanistan is "trying to reconcile a religious background of their country with a commitment they made in their own constitution to the universal declaration of human rights."
A National Security adviser who is unaware that Islam is a total integration of church and state, is in the wrong line of work. Forget Hadley, it's like this Condi: Muslim = abd-allah = slave-of-allah. Toss away your Karen Armstrong/John Esposito ink-abusers and read Robert Spencer.

I think they both know the issues here. Hadley has it right IMO: the Afghans generally aspire to democracy, which is a new thing for them. Now they have to think through what that means in practice and whether it's really compatible with Islamacism. The death penalty for apostates arguably isn't in the Q'uran, by the way - it's in the interpretations that have been added. A lot of Islamic countries don't have it in their legal code. There are Islamic precedents the Afghans could follow other than the Taliban's.

Posted by:Listen to Dogs

#15 Yep. But not in this millennium.

Posted by: gromgoru 2006-03-27 19:46

#14 "As long as we allow these so-called "fledgling" democracies to use sharia as the basis of their legal system, we will not make one inch of progress."

These ideas that you cannot let these Muslim democracies use sharia, or if they use sharia then no progress has been made, or the talk about over emphasis on voters all come up short. Progress has to begin somewhere. You cannot go in and tell these folks their whole way of life and their religion sucks - adopt ours now. Since that would not be calculated to work, then you have to be satisifed with a little slower progress. We accepted a little evil (slavery) while establishing a goverment that protected minority rights and insured basic freedoms. The evil was eliminated later. Had the drafters of the Declaration of Independence insisted on taking on the slavery issue at that time, then we'd still be sippin tea in the afternoon.

Posted by: Hank 2006-03-27 17:11

#13 Just imagine for a second that you don't exist.

Hold that thought.

It should free up some bandwidth.

Posted by: Creng Unains3685 2006-03-27 16:45

#12 Well, I, for one, am not real. I'm just a flickering impression of something that never really was. I'm 100% b*llshit, but I'm kinda at peace with it.

Posted by: anonymous5089 2006-03-27 16:36

#11 We're real. But only for the instant whist I fire off this post, after than, we're all part a savage Jello commercial in post-apkalypse Portland.

Posted by: 6 2006-03-27 16:28

#10 CU3685:
Everything is relative. The relative can't be proven. Therefore nothing is real. We are all fake. So leave us to our nothingness.

Posted by: Listen to Dogs 2006-03-27 14:25

#9 Virginia Statue for Religious Freedom (1786)

"Whereas Almighty God hath created the mind free; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the Holy author of our religion, who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as it was in his Almighty power to do; that the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavouring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world, and through all time; that to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical; that even the forcing him to support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion, is depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor, whose morals he would make his pattern, and whose powers he feels most persuasive to righteousness, and is withdrawing from the ministry those temporary rewards, which proceeding from an approbation of their personal conduct, are an additional incitement to earnest and unremitting labours for the instruction of mankind;"

A document so important that Thomas Jefferson's gravestone notes that he is author of this measure and NOT that he was president.

We are so stuck on the fetish of "voting" that we have forgotten what is truly required for a free, tolerant society. As long as we allow these so-called "fledgling" democracies to use sharia as the basis of their legal system, we will not make one inch of progress.

Apologies for the long post.

Posted by: Dreadnought 2006-03-27 11:34

#8 But there are difficult issues about the rights of the individual...

No, there are not!

There's nothing "difficult" here. They want to kill Rahman for something that's none of their goddamned business.

Posted by: Robert Crawford 2006-03-27 07:19

#7 caution to the meek

LOL. Are you for real?

Posted by: Creng Unains3685 2006-03-27 06:31

#6 Condi can wear the boots, but can she do the walking? (caution to the meek: exposed thighs above tight leather boots). http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/photo/homepage/hp2-25-04c.jpg

Posted by: Listen to Dogs 2006-03-27 06:02

#5 You sure do sound familiar.

Posted by: Whimble Ebberetch1516 2006-03-27 05:19

#4 Unless the man in the Afghan street interviews that I saw were non-representative, the fact that 100% vehemently supported execution of the convert - pre-trial - suggests sharia has a total hold over Afghanis.

Mohammad's extermination edict is in the Hadith, which is second to the Koran in authority. Bukhari's version reads, "If anyone (Muslim) abandons Islam, then kill them." In the absence of growing and subversive Muslim immigrant communities in the West, and aid from the productive States, Muslims would enforce the extermination edict. The cartoon-jihad is evidence of their intent to enforce extra-territorial application of sharia blasphemy laws.

Western leaders should be doing everything in their power to rollback aggressive Islam. The SUV incident, after which the perpetrator used Koran sanction to attempt justification, reveals our vulnerability. During Taliban/al-Qaeda rule, at least 50,000 Muslims - many on jihad vacations from the West - took training in the production and use of poisons, to inflict mass casualties against their enemy.

Islam cannot reform. A Muslim who is fully aware of his Koranic ("jihad is prescribed to you") obligations, will wage jihad terror when they have the means and opportunity to do same. The motive is in the death warrant for billions of disbelievers: the Koran.

Posted by: Listen to Dogs 2006-03-27 04:35

#3 Dr Dogs - I think Dr Rice is aware of far more than you credit her with, and in far greater detail. She has the most thankless job in the Federal Government - especially within the Bush Administration.

The job entails making nice with evil, insane, lying, back-stabbing thieves - conveniently shortened to "diplomats." Nicely telling them, in an escalating sequence:

"How do you see the situation?"
"That's not how we see it."
"This is how we see it."
"No, that isn't an acceptable outcome."
"Do you have any relatives left in-country?"
"That's a shame."

She's doing her job. I saw her interview today, and I think she's doing it very well.

Posted by: Flailet Unoper7560 2006-03-27 01:34

#2 My take, as long as the Afghanistan constitution is based on Sharia, the mad clerics run the store. The K government is limited in geography and the tribal leaders must be forced to comply or go bye-bye.

Much unfinished work in Afghanistan, as in Iraq.

Posted by: Captain America 2006-03-27 00:37

#1 Condi's getting Polly Annish

Posted by: Captain America 2006-03-27 00:32

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