Thursday, March 23, 2006
And in better news...
It's a Condi kind of day.
After several days of hemming and hawing about the execution crisis in Afghanistan, the US is finally taking a stronger stand. In case you need a refresher, a Muslim-turned-Christian was reported by his family to the local police. Converting from Islam to another religion is illegal under sharia (Islamic law). A judge has said that the man may face the death penalty.
It turns out that we did not, after all, overthrow the Taliban only to let a duplicate run the country. Condi and the US Department of State are pressuring the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, to intervene. The US, not incidentally, still has twenty thousand troops in Afghanistan. Conservative Christians in the United States are pressuring the US government to take action against the potential execution.
Naturally, the issue is not as one-sided as it seems. Conservative Muslims represent a large portion of Karzai's electorate. In a country still largely controlled by regional warlords, upsetting a good chunk of your supporters could prove disasterous for your government and your life. He attempted to nullify the issue by pressing the judge to declare the man temporarily insane. Of course, this doesn't satisfy the conservative Christians either, who don't usually like to be called insane.
After several days of hemming and hawing about the execution crisis in Afghanistan, the US is finally taking a stronger stand. In case you need a refresher, a Muslim-turned-Christian was reported by his family to the local police. Converting from Islam to another religion is illegal under sharia (Islamic law). A judge has said that the man may face the death penalty.
It turns out that we did not, after all, overthrow the Taliban only to let a duplicate run the country. Condi and the US Department of State are pressuring the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, to intervene. The US, not incidentally, still has twenty thousand troops in Afghanistan. Conservative Christians in the United States are pressuring the US government to take action against the potential execution.
Naturally, the issue is not as one-sided as it seems. Conservative Muslims represent a large portion of Karzai's electorate. In a country still largely controlled by regional warlords, upsetting a good chunk of your supporters could prove disasterous for your government and your life. He attempted to nullify the issue by pressing the judge to declare the man temporarily insane. Of course, this doesn't satisfy the conservative Christians either, who don't usually like to be called insane.
At least somebody's doing something to protect religious expression in the world, though! And would you look at that - it's people trying to protect their own faith! Shocking.
# posted by Dev @ 11:23 PM 
