ABC News and AP are reporting that Abdul Rahman has been released from a high-security prison outside of Kabul, but that he has immediately disappeared out of concern for his safety.
Unfortunately, Rahman - the 41-year-old Afghan man who was facing execution for his conversion from Islam to Christianity - appears to have been released to the very family members that wanted him charged and executed in the first place.
In yet another indication of their wobbliness, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said that where he goes after his release is "up to Mr. Rahman."
Luckily, the Italian government seems to have more backbone than does our own. The Italian Foreign Minister will ask a Cabinet meeting tomorrow to grant Mr. Rahman asylum in Italy. The ABC News/AP story details close ties between Italy and Afghanistan, so hopefully that will come through - since our government (pardon my frankness) just doesn't seem to give half a damn.
Michelle Malkin has her usual excellent roundup on the latest news in the Rahman case. She notes Secretary of State's Rice mistake (lie?) about Rahman's sanity being an excuse for not prosecuting (it is), and she too points out the State Department's "punting."
Anchoress Online has an outstanding piece on the Rahman case today, focusing less on the breaking news and more on the larger issues. What she labels as "one last thought" is probably her best one:
Throughtout history, we’ve seen Christians and Jews behave badly from time to time. More Christians than Jews, probably. But measure for measure, when the chips have been down, Christians and Jews have died for each other . Buddhists, too. Hindus, too. It is not particularly unusual to hear of people from one religion defend those of other faiths - even A Buddhist will defend the Pope. But these Islamofascist extremists (please note, I do not say ALL Muslims) won’t die for anyone else. This is the problem. They don’t seem to realize they’re part of the “community of man”Daniel Phillips at Biblical Christianity posted on the Rahman case Sunday, and has updated with the latest developments. He sums up much of my feelings in one sentence: "Not updating my optimism quotient." Another man with a low optimism quotient is the Washington Post's Richard Cohen, who pulls no punches and has much the same take as The Anchoress. This from Unfathomable Zealotry:
[I]t is not a solitary crazy prosecutor who brings the charge of apostasy but an entire society. It is not a single judge who would condemn the man but a culture. The Taliban are gone at gunpoint, their atrocities supposedly a thing of the past. In our boundless optimism, we consign them to the "too hard" file of horrors we cannot figure out: the Khmer Rouge, the Nazis, the communists of the Stalin period. Now, though, this awful thing returns and it is not just a single country that would kill a man for his beliefs but a huge swath of the world that would not protest. There can be only one conclusion: They were in agreement. The groupthink of the Muslim world is frightening. I know there are exceptions -- many exceptions. But still it seems that a man could be killed for his religious beliefs and no one would say anything in protest. It is also frightening to confront how differently we in the West think about such matters and why the word "culture" is not always a mask for bigotry, but an honest statement of how things are.Technorati tags: Abdul Rahman, Afghanistan, Christian persecution
|