If you’ve been following the international news at all lately, you’re likely familiar with the case of Abdul Rahman of Afghanistan.
Rahman, 41, was a medical aid worker with a Christian organization when he did the unforgiveable in strict Islamic countries: He converted to Christianity 16 years ago and, after returning to Afghanistan from abroad, was arrested for converting from Islam.
In Afghanistan, as in other countries with legal systems based on Shariah law, interpreted by many Muslims to require that any Muslim who rejects Islam be sentenced to death, that’s what happens. Shariah law is the rule in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Libya, Malaysia, parts of Nigeria and numerous other Islamic nations, particularly in the Middle East.
This case made world headlines and, with international pressure mounting, Rahman was freed Monday from the high-security prison where he had been held in solitary confinement and whisked away to a secret location. He’s asked for asylum because his life isn’t worth a plugged nickle in Afghanistan.
Prosecutors issued a letter stating he was “mentally unfit to stand trial” as the reason why they let him go.
Clerics, even some previously friendly to the United States, have threatened to incite their countrymen to kill Rahman if he were freed, saying he is guilty of apostasy and must die.
So why should we care about this in little ol’ Sweet Home, Oregon?
Without getting too deep into political and theological philosophy, let me just say that this incident, which is similar to others that have not been so well publicized but ended in darker consequences, makes me appreciate the freedom we have in the United States.
I happen to be a Christian, but legally in the United States, if I were a Muslim or a Hindu, or whatever, I would be free to worship as I pleased as long as I wasn’t committing some kind of crime (human sacrifice, for instance) in doing my thing.
There is a sense, among many Christians and others, that Christianity is in decline in the United States, and we hear a lot of folks bemoaning what they see as the disappearance of the “Judeo-Christian tradition.”
Certainly, in much of Oregon, there seems to be less sympathy for Christianity than I remember years ago when I was a kid, though Oregonians as a whole have never been very churched to begin with.
This Rahman case, though, made me recall an experience I had last year.
Last summer, I took my dog for a jog part way around Foster Lake for a little exercise. We were trotting across the dam when I noticed a group of people down by the edge of the water and a few in it. I recognized from afar that it was probably a baptismal service, which, sure enough, it was.
As I came up to the corner of the dam and North River Drive, a car turned onto the dam toward me and a woman leaned out and started screaming invectives in the direction of the service. From where I was, it was a little incoherent, but I thought I caught numerous variations of the “F” word — with some “H” and “D” words mixed in.
I got close right about the time she leaned back into her car and screeched away. I heard someone in the group below yell back “Jesus loves you and we do too,” or something along those lines.
The point of this is, though, that we enjoy a society where that woman is just as free to scream anything she wants, obnoxious as it may be, as those people were to conduct their service at a public lake, obnoxious as it may be to some.
Where did that freedom come from? It came from the notion that religion isn’t imposed by government. It should be a personal choice. That philosphy has been a key foundation-block of our nation for more than 200 years.
Freedom has its costs. It’s uncomfortable sometimes, especially when you’re around people who don’t share your beliefs or who hate you because of what you believe. There is a basic tendency in human nature to want to control others, which is the very reason why we have the principles of freedom built into our federal and state constitutions.
There are plenty of people these days who don’t like Judeo-Christian thought, who don’t like the 10 Commandments, who don’t like the idea of a God who demands obedience to those laws and yet has allowed people to make their own choice as to whether they would keep them. But those principles are really where much of our notion of freedom has come from.
And it’s troubling to recognize how a large portion of the world violently rejects that idea. It might make you stop and think what life would be like without it.