Christians of Iraq
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Christians of Iraq
Contact Links Historical articles Historical pictures Photos of Bombed Churches Home Only this link has access to all News articles
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Dying for Freedom When Islamic Laws Contradict the Universal Declaration of Human Rights By Robert Spencer
FrontPageMagazine.comMarch 23, 06
Not long after Abdul Rahman was arrested in Afghanistan, President Bush declared: "Before September the 11th, 2001, Afghanistan was ruled by a cruel regime that oppressed its people, brutalized women, and gave safe haven to the terrorists who attacked America. Today, the terror camps have been shut down; women are working; boys and girls are back in school; and 25 million people have now tasted freedom. The Afghan people are building a vibrant young democracy that is an ally in the war on terror. And America is proud to have such a determined partner in the cause of freedom."
Of course, when Bush spoke those words Abdul Rahman's case had not yet been reported in the West. But now that it has become international news that Abdul Rahman was arrested last month for the crime of leaving Islam and becoming a Christian, it is all too clear that the taste of freedom the Afghans are enjoying under the Karzai regime is not quite what many Westerners might have expected.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack tried to find a silver lining: "Under the Taliban, anybody considered an apostate was subject to torture and death. Right now, you have a legal proceeding that is under way in Afghanistan." Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns held out confidence in the outcome: "Our government is a great supporter of freedom of religion. As the Afghan constitution affords freedom of religion to all Afghan citizens, we hope very much that those rights, the right of freedom of religion, will be upheld in an Afghan court."
But the Afghan Constitution also stipulates that "no law can be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam." Even after the arrest of Abdul Rahman, Western analysts seem to have had trouble grasping the import of this. A "human rights expert" quoted by the Times of London summed up confusion that was widespread in Western countries: "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. It really highlights the problem the judiciary faces."
But in fact there is no problem. The Constitution declares its "respect" for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but never says about the Declaration what it says about Islamic law -- that no law can be made contradicting it. And as for the freedom of religion that Undersecretary Burns hopes will be upheld by the Afghan judiciary -- the Constitution circumscribed it from the beginning: "The religion of the state of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan is the sacred religion of Islam," it says. "Followers of other religions are free to exercise their faith and perform their religious rites within the limits of the provisions of law" (emphasis added).
It is likely that that last clause refers to provisions of traditional Islamic law denying various rights to non-Muslims and restricting freedom of conscience. It is just as likely that most Westerners who read the Afghan Constitution before the arrest of Abdul Rahman had no idea of its import. Thus Congressman Tom Lantos (D-CA), in an indignant letter to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, took pains to point out that Abdul Rahman's conversion had occurred long before the Karzai government took power, as if this restriction on freedom of conscience were somehow newly minted -- an invention of the present regime or perhaps a noxious borrowing from the Taliban: "In a country where soldiers from all faiths, including Christianity, are dying in defense of your government, I find it outrageous that Mr. Rahman is being prosecuted and facing the death penalty for converting to Christianity, which he did 16 years ago before your government even existed."
In fact, however, the Islamic death penalty for apostasy was not invented either by Karzai or Mullah Omar. It is as old as the Muslim Prophet Muhammad's command that "if somebody (a Muslim) discards his religion, kill him" (Bukhari, vol. 4, bk. 52, no. 260). It is deeply ingrained in Islamic culture -- which is one reason why it was Abdul Rahman's family that went to police to file a complaint about his conversion, even so many years after the fact. Whatever triggered their action now, they could be confident that the police would receive such a complaint with the utmost seriousness.
Anglican Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali has said, "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." The Abdul Rahman case is indeed an opportunity for the British and American governments to refine and clarify what exactly they mean by freedom: is it simple one-person one-vote self-determination, which has elected exponents of political Islam in large numbers recently in the Palestinian Authority, Iraq, Egypt and elsewhere? Or is it Western concepts of universal human rights and freedoms, as derived from the Judeo-Christian tradition and encapsulated by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?
Abdul Rahman may go free simply as a bid to keep American aid flowing into Kabul. But the deeper problem within Afghan society -- and the larger lack of focus in the Western powers' overall aims in Afghanistan and Iraq -- will still remain. We may hope that sometime soon President Bush, having determined to keep his new "partners in the cause of freedom," will call for the removal of the Sharia provisions in the Afghan and Iraqi Constitutions, and declare his support for full freedom of conscience such as that exercised by Abdul Rahman. Certainly such a course would lose him many friends in the Islamic world, but it would win him many there and elsewhere as well -- among those who hold that the dignity of the human person, and the right not to be coerced into belief, are worth defending.
Robert Spencer is a scholar of Islamic history, theology, and law and the director of Jihad Watch. He is the author of five books, seven monographs, and hundreds of articles about jihad and Islamic terrorism, including Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions About the World's Fastest Growing Faith and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades). He is also an Adjunct Fellow with the Free Congress Foundation.