Another Christian on the Bahhbie (well he's been spared this time)

Well after reading many stories about Abdul Rahman, the Afghani who converted from Islam to Christianity, I was happy to see that he was released to the custody of his family rather than being put to death. Sure they had to justfy his release by saying he wasn't mentally fit to stand trial, but sometimes you have to take a win where you can get it. The downside is that now Mr. Rahman has the entire religious community and no small number of devout Muslims in Afghanistan after his hide.

Having said that, its this kind of thing that makes me want to avoid American Adventurism. Yes we went to Afghanistan to "get the terrorists in Afghanistan." So now we want to secure Afghanistan as a pro-western pseudo-democracy, and thats where we run in to trouble. We mainly run in to trouble because Islam as a religion is not tolerant of OTHER religions when the nation's core law is based on sharia. In the United States we have a guarantee of a freedom to practice one's religion without government influence (unless due process otherwise contradicts this such as being charged with the promotion of a crime or inciting a riot). This is quite obviously not the case in Afghanistan.

We should ask ourselves several questions.

• Should we enforce our value system on the Afghanis?
• If so, how would we enforce these foreign values?
• If the Afghanis resist us, what then?

If you are of the Wilsonian mindset as our current President is, then you would at least want to change the Afghani mindset at the governmental level as to how other religions should be treated. Of course these government officials know that their constituents will not accept this as it is clearly a cultural betrayal.

This is the cultural imperialism that is most eggregious to muslims and other ethinicities and religious groupings world wide. It is not so much the big corporations and "decadent" western films as it is our rather meddlesome foreign policy.

I am sure there are voices within the State Department screaming for a more hands-off approach, to let the Afghanis run their own nation, that we have so benevolently given to them.

But as I sit back and look around me, I am glad that I was born in the United States of America, where this is not even an issue. My problem now, is with this nation that I love, exhausting itself by trying to make other nations clones of its own enlightened framework.

-- JC