Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying

What happens if Abdul Rahman is set free in Afghanistan and is then killed by a fanatical lynch mob? After all, clerics in Afghanistan have threatened to tear him to pieces. It is an entirely convenient outcome for all concerned. The West can say that they pressured the Karzai government to release him; and they would be right. The Karzai government can claim that they reconciled Western values with Afghan tradition and released the man (albeit on a technicality); and they would be right. The Afghan judiciary can say that they wanted to prosecute him but he was found insane; and they would be right. The Afghan clerics would say that justice must be served, and so a mob killing would be justified; and, by their logic, they would be right.

Everyone wins under this scenario except:

• Abdul Rahman (obviously, I don’t need to explain why he loses here)
• Afghanistan because it does not face the kind of hard choice that societies must confront in order to develop socially and politically
• Islam because it does not get to settle once and for all that the date on the calendar is 2006 and not 622
• The rest of us because we all have a stake in protecting basic human rights (codified internationally in the UDHR).

So, we should not embrace this ducking of the issue by Afghanistan or by our leaders. We should resist it. We should demand that the Afghan constitution resolve the conflict in its language between its acceptance of the UDHR and Islamic Sharia law. We wanted a revolution in that part of the world, well, now we’ve got it. This is the moment of Afghanistan’s liberation, not Tora Bora. We have considerable clout with the Karzai government (we pay his bills and provide for his security). It is time for us to demand a return on our investment. It is time for the Karzai government to move the Taliban out of the Afghan judiciary and offer some real protections. If his government falls, so be it. It was and is an impotent government anyway.

The real war against terror was in Afghanistan until we exported it to Iraq. That war still rages for all Afghanis - in the degradation of women, in medieval justice, in the illiteracy, in the ignorance, in the poverty. We must fight this war, now that we are called to wage it. This war is the "long war", to borrow a phrase. It requires bombs and teachers. It requires guns and books. It requires the exposition of one simple idea: that the basic right of human beings is the right to exist. And to exist means to think (tip to Descartes), and to think freely. All else follows: votes, democracy, wealth, pursuit of happiness, etc.

Whether this President and this Government has the political capital (after the humiliation in Iraq), the political will, and the requisite foresight and competence to carry out this long war remains in great doubt. Past experience suggests that the Administration is not capable of confronting this complex challenge. It pays lip service to words like "freedom" and "liberty" without understanding what lies behind these ideals. This Administration started the process in Afghanistan by removing the Taliban from official power. Now it must follow through by giving the Afghan people the tools needed to remove the Taliban from their lives. Anything less will be another defeat for the United States in this war.

What can we do as citizens? The easy answer is that we should make our leaders accountable to us. We should remind our leaders who the enemy is and who attacked us. We should remind them that those who attacked us are still out there and their mystique grows with the passing of each humiliating day in Iraq for the United States. Our leaders must find a way to contain the damage we have done to Iraq, to ourselves and to our ability to project moral and military power. They must find a way to restore the image of the United States in the world - with each passing day and each defiant swagger of the likes of John Bolton this task is that much harder. Our leaders must restore the international alliances and organizations that we have left in tatters. Our leaders must commit to doing all of these things, or we must send them off to early retirement.

Make no mistake, there is a battle going on not only for the soul of Islam but also for the soul of the United States. Where we stand in this fight will determine what kind of planet we leave our children. We must decide whether we choose a clash of civilizations or a historic leap forward in our understanding of one another. The stakes are nothing less than that.

The CNN website is now featuring the Afghan persecution story as its lead story. Let’s hope that it stays there until tomorrow morning so that a wider audience can see it. You can read my posts on the topic here and here.

In an earlier post, I discussed the plight of the man in Afghanistan facing death for converting to Christianity. Today, we have heard the official U.S. Government response to this absurdity. Our response came at a press conference held by Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns and Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah. The liberators of Afghanistan from the Taliben, the promulgator of Freedom and Liberty, the up rooter of tyranny everywhere, had this to say, as reported by the BBC:

Speaking alongside Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah at a press conference in Washington, US Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns urged Afghanistan to respect Mr Rahman’s religious rights.

However, he did not ask for his immediate release and said he respected Afghan sovereignty.

"Our government is a great supporter of freedom of religion," Mr Burns said.

"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."

I am astonished that we are letting a little thing like "sovereignty" get in the way of expressing our outrage. If this is the kind of freedom we propose to bring to the world, I think we really need to get out of the invasion business. Freedom means freedom for the people of Afghanistan, not freedom for the Afghan government to persecute its citizens. Surely, we have more leverage than this with the Afghan government. I thought this kind of thinking in Afghanistan was what led them to provide safe harbor to Al Qaeda.

Then, there is the little matter of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is the declaration that was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948 to guarantee basic rights to all human beings. This declaration was adopted in clear response to the horrors of the Holocaust. Article 18 of the Declaration states:

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance. [Emphasis added by me]

The United States, at a bare minimum, should insist upon the adherence to the UDHR in Afghanistan. Anything less should be unacceptable to us and we should say so.

As a Muslim American, I feel particular shame that this kind of ignorant justice is being pursued in Afghanistan in the name of Islam. All Muslims around the world should be at the forefront in rejecting this nonsense. Muslim Americans in particular, and all Americans in general, should lobby the U.S. Government to ensure this atrocity is not allowed to happen.

AMERICAblog has a post on the Afghan man facing death for converting to Christianity. The original story appears on the ABC News website here.

Apparently, the only hope the man has of escaping the death penalty is if he is found to be insane. Apparently in Afghanistan, it is better to be insane than to be a Christian. Chalk this up to another manifestation of our failed worldwide democracy drive. I think our money would be far better spent on eradicating illiteracy than on blowing up Iraqis. We have declared victory and walked away from Afghanistan. We have handed over the keys to NATO and turned a blind eye to the resurgence of the narcotics trade in Afghanistan. Bringing a war-torn, impoverished and illiterate society into the community of nations is not as simple as ordering up the next batch of smart bombs. Once the military finishes its job, the truly difficult job of reconstruction begins. This Administration is clearly not up to that task.

My message to the Administration today is a very simple one. If you want to defeat terrorism, you must fight ignorance as hard as you employ the military option. Without it, this war cannot be won.

Before the all too easy Islam bashing gets going in earnest once this story starts flashing over the airwaves, let me do my part to combat the ignorance about Islam by separating "Ignorance" from "Islam". Only an ignorant law would suggest that a man ought to be killed for being a Christian. Here are some interesting tid bits about Islam that might dispel some common misconceptions:

• In Islam, it is fundamental that there is no compulsion in religion.
  • Verse 2.256 from the Koran: "There is no compulsion in religion; truly the right way has become clearly distinct from error; therefore, whoever disbelieves in the Shaitan and believes in Allah he indeed has laid hold on the firmest handle, which shall not break off, and Allah is Hearing, Knowing. "
  • Verses 4.79 and 4.80: "Whatever benefit comes to you (O man!), it is from Allah, and whatever misfortune befalls you, it is from yourself, and We have sent you (O Prophet!), to mankind as an apostle; and Allah is sufficient as a witness. Whoever obeys the Apostle, he indeed obeys Allah, and whoever turns back, so We have not sent you as a keeper over them."
  • Verses 17.54 and 17.55: And tell my servants that they should speak in a most kindly manner (unto those who do not share their beliefs). Verily, Satan is always ready to stir up discord between men; for verily; Satan is mans foe. Hence, We have not sent you (Unto men O Prophet) with power to determine their Faith."
• Christian, Jews and other monotheistic religions are referred to as the "People of the Book" in the Koran. They are not "infidels" as is commonly mentioned.
  • Verse 2.62 from the Koran: "Surely those who believe, and those who are Jews, and the Christians, and the Sabians, whoever believes in Allah and the Last day and does good, they shall have their reward from their Lord, and there is no fear for them, nor shall they grieve. "

If countries like Afghanistan truly intend to live within the modern world, they must acknowledge that this is the 21st century and not the 7th century. For that to happen, there has to be literacy and poverty alleviation (two sides of the same coin). Until they do that, no amount of democracy at the point of a gun will change a thing. And very soon, they will slide back into banning the flying of kites and resume beheading people in soccer stadiums.