Afghan Christian Could Get Death Sentence
By DANIEL COONEY Associated Press Writer
March 19, 2006, 6:48 PM EST
KABUL, Afghanistan -- An Afghan man is being prosecuted in a Kabul court and could be sentenced to death on a charge of converting from Islam to Christianity, a crime under this country's Islamic laws, a judge said Sunday.
The trial is believed to be the first of its kind in Afghanistan and highlights a struggle between religious conservatives and reformists over what shape Islam should take here four years after the ouster of the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban regime.
The defendant, 41-yer-old Abdul Rahman, was arrested last month after his family accused him of becoming a Christian, Judge Ansarullah Mawlavezada told The Associated Press in an interview. Rahman was charged with rejecting Islam and his trial started Thursday.
During the one-day hearing, the defendant confessed that he converted from Islam to Christianity 16 years ago while working as a medical aid worker for an international Christian group helping Afghan refugees in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, Mawlavezada said.
"We are not against any particular religion in the world. But in Afghanistan, this sort of thing is against the law," the judge said. "It is an attack on Islam."
Mawlavezada said he would rule on the case within two months.
Afghanistan's constitution is based on Shariah law, which is interpreted by many Muslims to require that any Muslim who rejects Islam be sentenced to death, said Ahmad Fahim Hakim, deputy chairman of the state-sponsored Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission.
Repeated attempts to interview Rahman in detention were barred.
The prosecutor, Abdul Wasi, said he had offered to drop the charges if Rahman converted back to Islam, but he refused.
"He would have been forgiven if he changed back. But he said he was a Christian and would always remain one," Wasi told AP. "We are Muslims and becoming a Christian is against our laws. He must get the death penalty."
After being an aid worker for four years in Pakistan, Rahman moved to Germany for nine years, his father, Abdul Manan, said outside his Kabul home.
Rahman returned to Afghanistan in 2002 and tried to gain custody of his two daughters, now aged 13 and 14, who had been living with their grandparents their whole lives, the father said. A custody battle ensued and the matter was taken to the police.
During questioning, it emerged that Rahman was a Christian and was carrying a Bible. He was immediately arrested and charged, the father said.
Afghanistan is a conservative Islamic country. Some 99 percent of its 28 million people are Muslim, and the remainder are mainly Hindu.
Pressure Grows to Free Afghan Convert By AMIR SHAH
Associated Press Writer
March 25, 2006, 2:46 AM EST
KABUL, Afghanistan -- The Afghan government faced heavy international pressure to reconsider the charges against an Afghan man who faces a possible death sentence for converting from Islam to Christianity -- and reports emerged that the man might be freed soon.
Pressure against the case has been building, and the Afghan government may be rethinking the charges against Abdul Rahman. Authorities met Saturday to discuss his fate, while a senior official said he could be freed shortly.
"They're all meeting at the moment about it," an official at President Hamid Karzai's palace said when asked if the government had made a decision on the matter. Another Afghan official told The Associated Press that Rahman, 41, could be freed soon. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to comment on the case to the media.
Senior clerics in the Afghan capital have voiced strong support for prosecuting Rahman and again warned Friday they would incite people to kill him unless he reverted to Islam.
Ansarullah Mawlavi Zada, the chief among three judges trying the case, asserted the autonomy of the court.
"We have constitution and law here. Nobody has the right to put pressure on us," he told the AP.
Australia's Prime Minister John Howard, meanwhile, joined the chorus of Western leaders expressing outrage over the prosecution and said he would protest personally to President Hamid Karzai.
"This is appalling. When I saw the report about this I felt sick literally," Howard told an Australian radio network Friday. "The idea that a person could be punished because of their religious belief and the idea they might be executed is just beyond belief."
Rahman faces the death penalty under Afghanistan's Islamic laws for converting 16 years ago while working as a medical aid worker for an international Christian group helping Afghan refugees in Pakistan.
The case has put Karzai in an awkward position. The Afghan leader took power after the ouster of the hard-line Taliban regime in a U.S.-led war in late 2001 and relies on international forces to maintain his still-shaky grip on the country.
But he would be reluctant to offend Islamic sensibilities at home or alienate religious conservatives wielding considerable power.
Diplomats have said the Afghan government is searching for a way to drop the case. On Wednesday, authorities said Rahman is suspected of being mentally ill and would undergo psychological examinations to see whether he is fit to stand trial.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice phoned Karzai on Thursday, seeking a "favorable resolution" of the case. She said Washington looked forward to that "in the very near future."
Senior clerics condemned Rahman as an apostate.
Rahman had "committed the greatest sin" by converting to Christianity and deserved to be killed, cleric Abdul Raoulf said in a sermon Friday at Herati Mosque.
"God's way is the right way, and this man whose name is Abdul Rahman is an apostate," he told about 150 worshippers.
Another cleric, Ayatullah Asife Muhseni, told a gathering of preachers and intellectuals at a Kabul hotel that the Afghan president had no right to overturn the punishment of an apostate.
He also demanded that clerics be able to question Rahman in jail to discover why he had converted to Christianity. He suggested it could have been the result of a conspiracy by Western nations or Jews.
At a fruit market in Kabul, many ordinary Afghans said they supported the death penalty, but some wanted more investigation before meting out the punishment.
"In the past 30 years, so many Afghans have been killed in name of communism, Taliban and politics or for robbery. It's enough Afghans killed," said Ghulam Mohammed, 45, a former army officer. Clerics should talk to him (Rahman) and bring him to the right way."
What is this Law the man is being threatened with and is it Islamic:
Question #12406: Why should a person who disbelieves after becoming Muslim be executed?
Question :
The punishment for the apostate is execution. Why such harshness?.
Answer :
Praise be to Allaah.
The punishment for apostasy from the religion of Islam is execution. Allaah says (interpretation of the meaning):
"śAnd whosoever of you turns back from his religion and dies as a disbeliever, then his deeds will be lost in this life and in the Hereafter, and they will be the dwellers of the Fire. They will abide therein forever"ť
[al-Baqarah 2:217]
And it was proven that the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: "śWhoever changes his religion, execute him."ť Narrated by al-Bukhaari in his Saheeh. What this hadeeth means is that whoever leaves Islam and changes to another religion and persists in that and does not repent, is to be executed. It was also proven that the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: "śIt is not permissible to shed the blood of a person who bears witness that there is no god but Allaah and that I am the Messenger of Allaah except in three cases: a life for a life, a previously-married person who commits adultery, and one who leaves Islam and forsakes the jamaa"™ah."ť Narrated by al-Bukhaari and Muslim.
This harsh punishment is for a number of reasons:
1 "“ This punishment is a deterrent to anyone who wants to enter Islam just to follow the crowd or for hypocritical purposes. This will motivate him to examine the matter thoroughly and not to proceed unless he understands the consequences of that in this world and in the Hereafter. The one who announces his Islam has agreed to adhere to all the rulings of Islam of his own free will and consent, one of which rulings is that he is to be executed if he apostatizes from the faith.
2 "“ The one who announces his Islam has joined the jamaa"™ah (main body) of the Muslims, and whoever joins the main body of the Muslims is required to be completely loyal and to support it and protect it against anything that may lead to fitnah or destroy it or cause division. Apostasy from Islam means forsaking the jamaa"™ah and its divine order, and has a harmful effect on it. Execution is the greatest deterrent that will prevent people from committing such a crime.
3 "“ Those Muslims who are weak in faith and others who are against Islam may think that the apostate has only left Islam because of what he has found out about its real nature, because if it were the truth then he would never have turned away from it. So they learn from him all the doubts, lies and fabrications which are aimed at extinguishing the light of Islam and putting people off from it. In this case executing the apostate is obligatory, in order to protect the true religion from the defamation of the liars and to protect the faith of its adherents and remove obstacles from the path of those who are entering the faith.
4 "“ We also say that the death penalty exists in the modern laws of man to protect the system from disorder in some situation and to protect society against certain crimes which may cause its disintegration, such as drugs etc. If execution can serve as a deterrent to protect man-made systems, then it is more appropriate that the true religion of Allaah, which Falsehood cannot come to it from before it or behind it [cf. Fussilat 41:42], and which is all goodness, happiness and tranquility in this world and in the Hereafter should punish those who commit acts of aggression against it and seek to extinguish its light and defame its image, and who fabricate lies against it to justify their apostasy and deviation.
Fataawa al-Lajnah al-Daa"™imah, 21/234-231.
"śAnd whosoever of you turns back from his religion and dies as a disbeliever, then his deeds will be lost in this life and in the Hereafter, and they will be the dwellers of the Fire. They will abide therein forever"ť
2:217
the Prophet said: "Whoever changes his religion, kill him."
Bukhari
jazakiallahkhair
Volumn 008, Book 076, Hadith Number 586.
-----------------------------------------
Narated By Ibn Al-Musaiyab : The companions of the Prophet said, "Some men from my companions will come to my Lake-Fount and they will be driven away from it, and I will say, 'O Lord, my companions!' It will be said, 'You have no knowledge of what they innovated after you left: they turned apostate as renegades (reverted from Islam).
If you think that modern Islam doesn"™t agree with what is happening to this man then go to the Islamic message boards and do some reading.
The latest news on this event seems to be that the Afghanistan courts have found a way of pleasing the western world by having this fellow declared mentally un-fit.
Kind of a nice dodge so you don"™t have to explain to the world just how barbaric some of the Islamic laws are, don"™t you think?
Thanks Mr-Pirk
__________________
A proud owner of a Flying Vee. Bestowed by the fine Gentleman VC1111 himself.
An Afghan Christian facing possible execution for converting from Islam was likely to be released from jail "soon," a senior government official said following huge Western pressure over the case.
"He is likely to be released soon," the official said, adding there would be a top-level meeting on the matter Saturday.
Abdul Rahman was arrested two weeks ago under Islamic Sharia law and faced a possible death sentence in a case that has attracted widespread condemnation, especially from the United States.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice telephoned Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Thursday to step up pressure to free 41-year-old Rahman, who converted in Germany 16 years ago and was turned in by his parents on his return to Afghanistan.
Rice said she phoned Karzai to hammer home "in the strongest possible terms" Washington's concern over the proceedings against Rahman.
"There is no more fundamental issue for the United States than freedom of religion and religious conscience," she said.
Rice also raised the issue in a meeting Wednesday with visiting Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah.
President George W. Bush said he was "deeply troubled" by the case.
In Ottawa, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said he telephoned Karzai on Wednesday to express concern about a possible execution and "he conveyed to me that we don't have to worry about any such eventual outcome."
Karzai "assured me that what's alarmed most of us will be worked out quickly ... in a way that fully respects religious rights, religious freedoms and human rights," Harper added.
Afghanistan's Supreme Court said Thursday it was trying to find a "good solution" to the case, the first of its kind here, including persuading Rahman to revert to Islam.
Sharia law, on which the Afghan constitution is partly based, rules that conversion away from Islam must be punished by death if the accused person fails to revert.
__________________
You're only one post away from a federal watch list.
"Praise Allah the bird flu has hit the Jews. It came because of their sins against the Palestinians; because they are the most cruel enemy of humanity," Muslim leader Sheikh Muhammed promised his congregation.
Never mind the fact that bird flu has only killed turkeys in Israel, while in Islamic Egypt a woman has died. We know it is an attack on Israel, because the Muslim leader says it is.
There is more that will encourage Allah's terrorist to keep blowing themselves up. Bird flu is the sign Israel will be destroyed by 2025. "This bird flu will be the beginning of diseases which will hit the nonbelievers. Please Allah keep hitting the enemy with more diseases. This is no doubt the beginning of the end of the Israelis. Like [late Hamas spiritual leader] Sheikh Yassin said 2025 will be the end of Jews. This [bird flu] is the sign," Muhammed said, according to Aaron Klein"™s report in WorldNetDaily.com.
The Muslim clergyman said Allah hit the Israelis with birds, since birds are mentioned in the Koran as a tool used to defeat infidels.
It is wonderful that the clergyman has enlightened us with divine wisdom about birds. The Koran says birds came down like dive-bombers and threw stones on the infidels: "śAnd he sent against them birds in flocks (ababils), Claystones did they hurl down upon them, and he made them like stubble eaten down!"ť (Koran 105:4).
If dive-bombing birds don"™t scare you, there is more. "śBirds snatch infidels up and carry them far, far away: "śwhereupon the birds carry him off, or the wind blows him away onto a far-off place"ť (Koran 22:31).
And if dive-bombing, kidnapping birds don"™t grab your attention, get this, the Koran says Allah"™s army of birds march in military drills along side men and invisible beings: "śAnd [one day] there were assembled before Solomon his hosts of invisible beings, and of men, and of birds; and then they were led forth in orderly ranks"ť (27:17).
To save themselves from Allah"™s dive-bombing, kidnapping, marching army of birds, Israel must frantically work to decode the bird"™s secret language as Solomon did: "śAnd [in this insight] Solomon was [truly] David"™s heir; and he would say: "śO you people! We have been taught the speech of birds, and have been given [in abundance] of all [good] things: this, behold, is indeed a manifest favour [from God]!"ť(Koran 27:16).
__________________
wayne
"There's room at the cross for you."
I certainly hope they free this man. In this country, we're supposed to be respectful to Muslims. Our children get taught all about Islam in the public schools. We go out of our way not to "profile" people of middle eastern decent. And the muslims claim that their's is a "religion of peace."
Now they want to kill a man because he became a Christian.
Tell me again why we should treat them so well when they treat Christians so badly?
__________________
Today' s small bucks are tomorrow' s trophies.
[image]http://www.whitetails.com/deer8.html[image]
More Christians Arrested in Wake of Afghan ?Apostasy? Case
Barbara G. Baker
Compass Direct
March 23, 2006
An avalanche of media coverage of an Afghan man facing the death penalty
for converting to Christianity has apparently sparked the arrest and
deepening harassment of other Afghan Christians in the
ultra-conservative Muslim country.
Authorities arrested Abdul Rahman, 41, last month for apostasy, a
capital offense under strict Islamic laws still in place in Afghanistan,
which four years ago was wrested from the Taliban regime’s
hard-line Islamist control.
During the past few days, Compass has confirmed the arrest of two other
Afghan Christians elsewhere in the country. Because of the sensitive
situation, local sources requested that the location of the jailed
converts be withheld.
This past weekend, one young Afghan convert to Christianity was beaten
severely outside his home by a group of six men, who finally knocked him
unconscious with a hard blow to his temple. He woke up in the hospital
two hours later but was discharged before morning.
“Our brother remains steadfast, despite the ostracism and
beatings,” one of his friends said.
Several other Afghan Christians have been subjected to police raids on
their homes and places of work in the past month, as well as to
telephone threats.
First Known Apostasy Case
Rahman was put on trial in Kabul last week for the
“crime” of converting from Islam to Christianity and
faces the death penalty for refusing to return to the Muslim faith.
But news of his case did not break until March 16, when Ariana TV
announced it. According to the TV newscaster, Rahman was asked in court,
“Do you confess that you have apostacized from Islam?”
The defendant answered, “No, I am not an apostate. I believe in
God.”
He was then questioned, “Do you believe in the Quran?”
Rahman responded, “I believe in the New Testament, and I love
Jesus Christ.”
Although Islamist militants have captured and murdered at least five
Afghan Christians in the past two years for abandoning Islam,
Rahman’s case is the local judiciary’s first known
prosecution case for apostasy in recent decades.
During Rahman’s initial hearing before the head judge of
Kabul’s Primary Court, he testified that he had become a
Christian 16 years ago, while working with a Christian relief
organization in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, near the Afghan border.
But after his conversion, Rahman’s wife divorced him, so their
two infant daughters were taken back to Afghanistan, where they have
been raised by their paternal grandparents.
Soon afterwards Rahman left Pakistan, and over the next few years he
managed to enter several European countries. Although he attempted to
apply for asylum, he was never able to obtain legal immigration status.
After nine years, many of them in European detention centers because he
had no valid papers, he was finally deported back to Afghanistan in
2002.
Back in Kabul, Rahman eventually contacted his family. In recent months,
he tried repeatedly to regain custody of his daughters, now 13 and 14
years of age.
“The father finally went to the police in order to stop Abdul
from contacting him, by telling them that Abdul converted to
Christianity,” a Kabul source said. He was promptly taken into
custody, interrogated and sent to jail to await trial.
Although Rahman is allowed to have a defense lawyer, he has declined,
insisting he can defend himself. But according to Christian sources in
Kabul, the convert suffers from recurring mental instability, which
could alter the Islamic court’s handling of his case.
Rahman is reportedly incarcerated with 50 other prisoners in a cell
designed for 15 in Kabul’s Central Prison, where members of the
press have been denied access to him. Since he is estranged from his
family, and prisoners are traditionally dependent upon food rations
supplied by their families, it is unclear whether he is being fed
regularly.
Labeled a ‘Cancer’
If Rahman is found guilty of apostasy and given the death penalty, as
demanded by prosecutor Abdul Wasi, Afghan law permits him two final
appeals â€" first to the provincial court, and then the Supreme
Court.
Calling Rahman a “traitor to Islam,” Wasi told the court
he was “like a cancer inside Afghanistan.”
Wasi told the Associated Press (AP) that when he offered to drop all the
charges against Rahman if he returned to Islam, the defendant refused.
“He said he was a Christian and would always remain
one,” Wasi said.
“We are Muslims, and becoming a Christian is against our
laws,” the prosecutor concluded. “He must get the death
penalty.”
Rahman is being tried by Judge Ansarullah Mawlavizada, who has said he
would issue a verdict on the case within two months.
“We are not against any particular religion in the
world,” the judge told the AP on March 19. “But in
Afghanistan, this sort of thing is against the law. It is an attack on
Islam.”
On March 20, however, Judge Mawlavizada told the British Broadcasting
Corporation that Rahman’s mental state would be considered
first, “before he was dealt with under sharia [Islamic]
law.”
President Hamid Karzai’s office has said the president will not
intervene in the case. But today a religious adviser to Karzai announced
that Rahman would be given psychological tests.
“Doctors must examine him,” Moayuddin Baluch told the
AP. “If he is mentally unfit, definitely Islam has no claim to
punish him. He must be forgiven. The case must be dropped.”
Although the Afghan government is clearly anxious to resolve
Rahman’s case in order to satisfy international criticisms, the
state-sponsored Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission has
reportedly called for Rahman to be punished, insisting that he had
“clearly violated Islamic law.”
Rahman’s plight dramatizes the judicial paradox within
Afghanistan’s new constitution, ratified in January 2004.
Although it guarantees freedom of religion to non-Muslims, it also
prohibits laws that are “contrary to the beliefs and provisions
of the sacred religion of Islam.”
At the same time, the constitution obliges the state to abide by the
treaties and conventions it has signed, which include the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights. In outlining freedoms of thought,
conscience and religion, Article 18 of this convention explicitly
guarantees “freedom to change [one’s] religion or
belief.”
Less than 1 percent of the Afghan population is non-Muslim, mostly
Hindus and Sikhs. Among the millions of Afghans living abroad during
recent decades of conflict in their homeland, some have openly declared
themselves Christians. But no churches exist inside Afghanistan, and
local converts to Christianity fear retribution if they declare their
faith.
International Outcry
Before he was dropped from the Afghan government’s cabinet
today, reporters grilled Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah yesterday
(March 21) about his country’s controversial
“apostasy” case during a Washington, D.C. press
conference focusing on this week’s U.S.-Afghan strategic
partnership talks in Washington.
Acknowledging that the Afghan Embassy in Washington had received
hundreds of messages since the trial of Afghan Christian Abdul Rahman
was made public last week, Abdullah insisted that his government had
nothing to do with the case.
Rahman, who is charged with abandoning Islam 16 years ago, is liable for
execution under Afghanistan’s Islamic law statutes.
“I know that it is a very sensitive issue and we know the
concerns of the American people,” Abdullah said. “But I
hope that through our constitutional process, there will be a
satisfactory result.”
Speaking at Abdullah’s side, Nicholas Burns, U.S. undersecretary
of state of political affairs, sidestepped direct U.S. interference in
Afghan sovereignty while admitting, “… from an American
point of view, people should be free to choose their own
religion.”
Two days ago, the U.S. State Department had confirmed that the United
States was “following closely” the trial proceedings,
emphasizing that there were “differing interpretations”
of the current Afghan constitution within the country. The Afghan
authorities were being urged to “conduct this trial … in
as transparent a manner as possible,” the spokesman said.
Meanwhile, Western allies in the international coalition of troops
deployed in Afghanistan have expressed outrage and point-blank
condemnation of the trial over the past three days.
Lawmakers and leaders in Italy and Germany declared pointedly that it
was “intolerable” that soldiers of all faiths should die
to protect a country threatening to kill its own citizens for converting
to Christianity. Canada confirmed that it was also “closely
watching” the case, while the German Foreign Minister said he
viewed it with “great concern.”
“If Afghanistan does not quickly modernize its legal
system,” German opposition politician Rainer Bruderle told the
daily Bild today, “Germany must rethink its help for
Afghanistan.”
After the Italian government summoned the Afghan ambassador to Rome
yesterday to discuss Rahman’s case, a Foreign Ministry statement
pledged that Italy would “move at the highest level … to
prevent something which is incompatible with the defense of human rights
and fundamental freedoms.”
From the British Parliament, Nick Harvey of the Liberal Democrats
remarked, “To prosecute or even kill someone for having a
different faith is unacceptable.” Labour Member of Parliament
Alan Simpson agreed, declaring in a statement to The Times in London,
“This absurdity must stop.”
A strong protest was also lodged before the European Parliament by Dr.
Charles Tannock, who questioned the European Union’s generous
funding of a country “which appears to ignore its international
legal obligations, and apparently is still ruled by a fundamentalist
version of Islamic sharia law.” The parliamentarian called for a
plea of clemency to be issued by the EU, requesting Afghanistan to exile
Rahman to another country where his religious freedom would be
guaranteed.
But one Afghan cabinet official has reacted sharply to the German
government’s blunt criticism of the trial, telling the Neue
Osnabrueceker Zeitung newspaper that “the heated and emotional
reaction of German politicians is exaggerated and has caused annoyance
among Afghans.”
Afghan Economy Minister Amin Farhang claimed that although
“fanatics demand the death penalty in such cases,” such
a sentence was unlikely against Rahman.
Copyright 2006 Compass Direct.
Those who kneel before G-d can stand before anyone! Please daven for the
safety of Am Yisrael and Eretz Yisrael and for G-d's Shalom for
Yerushalayim ! Am Yisrael Chai! Please support Healing Teddies --- (
write to <handsfiasco@webtv.net>
__________________
"Blessed is He who Comes in The Name of The Lord"
You know I have always felt that if you want to know what someone beleives you should ask them and not listen to others opinions, because that is all they are.... opinions, and many times biased opinions.
Rather then us all sitting around reading what others post about what Muslims belief and what they are like we should take a few minutes and talk to some. Here is a link to a Muslim chat site where all people are welcome, Muslim or not and just like here as long as the discussion is respectful you will receive honest, friendly respectful answers, you all may be shocked to see that there is no call for death to all infidel or the like. http://www.islammessage.com/bb/
__________________
The Tazman aka Martin Price
Proud father of a Devil Dog
Praise Allah the bird flu has hit the Jews. It came because of their sins against the Palestinians; because they are the most cruel enemy of humanity," Muslim leader Sheikh Muhammed promised his congregation
This is what a Jewish Rabbi had to say.
An outbreak of deadly bird flu in Israel is God's punishment for calls in election ads to legalize gay marriages, according to Rabbi David Basri, a prominent sage preaching Kabbalah or Jewish mysticism.
"The Bible says that God punishes depravity first through plagues against animals and then in people," Basri said in a religious edict quoted by his son.
Basri said he hoped the deaths of hundreds of thousands of turkeys and chickens would help atone for what he called the sins of left-wing Israeli political parties, the son, Rabbi Yitzhak Basri, told Reuters, a week before a national election.
The bird flu outbreak stemmed from far-left political parties "strengthening and encouraging homosexuality," Rabbi Basri's son quoted him as saying.
One of the parties aired an election commercial depicting two brides kissing. Some campaign advertisements also called for homosexual marriages to be legalized in Israel.
Basri is a prominent Kabbalist and author of commentaries on the Zohar, the main Kabbalah mystical text.
[/align]
__________________
You're only one post away from a federal watch list.
Islam: Religion of Peace and Enlightenment
