Hey, Ma, Look What We Done!

This story (excerpted below) was painful to listen to on the morning news.

FOXNews.com - U.S. & World News - Afghan Man Faces Death for Allegedly Converting to Christianity

Sunday , March 19, 2006

KABUL, Afghanistan — An Afghan man who allegedly converted from Islam to Christianity is being prosecuted in a Kabul court and could be sentenced to death, a judge said Sunday. The defendant, Abdul Rahman, was arrested last month after his family went to the police and accused him of becoming a Christian, Judge Ansarullah Mawlavezada told the Associated Press in an interview. Such a conversion would violate the country's Islamic laws.

During the hearing, the defendant allegedly confessed that he converted from Islam to Christianity 16 years ago when he was 25 and working as a medical aid worker for Afghan refugees in neighboring Pakistan, Mawlavezada said.

Afghanistan's constitution is based on Shariah law, which states that any Muslim who rejects their religion should be sentenced to death. "We are not against any particular religion in the world. But in Afghanistan, this sort of thing is against the law," the judge said. "It is an attack on Islam. ... The prosecutor is asking for the death penalty." The prosecutor, Abdul Wasi, said the case was the first of its kind in Afghanistan. He said that he had offered to drop the charges if Rahman changed his religion back to Islam, but the defendant refused.

Mawlavezada said he would rule on the case within two months. Afghanistan is a deeply conservative society and 99 percent of its 28 million people are Muslim. The rest are mainly Hindus.

(All emphases are ours)

If there is anything we have been shouting to the rooftops, it is the fact that ideas count. Tagged to that is another fact: People are only as good as the ideas they hold. Sadly, homo sapiens, even in America, have trouble understanding this, judging from the egregious contradictions allowed to stand in a civilized country such as ours, and a billion people accepting the destructiveness of Islam without question.

It reminds us of a fantasy that popped into mind a good while back: Imagine Paul Revere and Sybil Luddington shouting that the British are coming, only to hear from the bedroom windows something like, "Close that window so we can go back to sleep." Happily some do get the importance of ideas to homo sapiens, and others are receptive, but they are presently outnumbered and do not hold positions of power--yet.

The first pain is for the poor man in Afghanistan who was turned over to sharia by his family because he converted to Christianity, and now he faces death at the hands of the Afghani government, which we installed. That leads to the second pain: Look what we done!

We, under President Bush, expended blood and treasure on Afghanistan, then turned around and let them have an Islamic government with sharia law. This man is not the first under the Kharzai government to suffer sharia; an editor was threatened with death unless he recanted criticisms of Islam.

Truly, we got everything we asked for in Afghanistan.

Where is the protest about our establishing an Islamic-sharia government in Afghanistan from our public figures? Sadly, almost no protest has come from the American people either. The fact remains: We got rid of al qaeda and the taliban, a ruthless dictatorship oppressing Afghanis, so we could put in our own dictatorship, one which uses exactly the same ideology. Does that make any sense? The difference between governmental behavior under the taliban and this post-taliban government is solely a function of time: The post-taliban government has not yet had the time to devolve into full tyranny. It has begun, however.

The Bush administration has done the same thing in Iraq, for exactly the same reasons, and few Americans have protested. Most protests we see and hear are worn-out, repetitious, and stale liberalism.

We will never get anything better from the Bush administration because of the quality of the ideas they hold. Very bad ideas cannot be rationalized by some superficiality such as they-voted-democratically. Besides, Bush et al will do anything to keep from identifying Islam for what it is.

When it comes down to brass tacks, we are not fighting any war against terror--We are fighting a war to prevent our own success.

The American people have to take a big hit on this as well. So many polls point out how religious Americans are, in very high percentages. Their dedication to religion, mostly Christianity and Judaism, has tied their brains behind their backs. The popular mental paralysis takes the form of this syllogism: All religions are good; Islam is a religion: therefore, Islam is good. Added to that is the prohibition instilled in childhood never to criticize any religion. Islam and Islamists could ask for nothing better for ensuring their jihad.

No one can change anyone's mind except that person himself or herself. We can hope that Americans can overcome their self-induced blindness about Islam before we are fighting Muslims and each other in our homeland.