20060327
    On the 23rd of March, I posted a rather cynical post on the fate of Afghani Abdul Rahman as he stood capital charges in a Shariah court for his conversion to Christianity. While I still do not believe that Mr Rahman is out of the woods just yet, his case has taken a far different turn than I expected last week.
    For the time being, Mr Rahman’s case has been dismissed from the court for ‘lack of evidence’, and he is being allowed by the Afghan government to apply for asylum. There is still plenty of time for the government to renege, the court to change its mind, or for the Afghani people to gain the upper hand in this ordeal by taking ‘justice’ into their own hands, but for now, the case of Abdul Rahman seems to be going rather better than I could have hoped.
    This reality speaks to another reality in the ongoing development of the democracies of Afghanistan and Iraq. While the democracies of these lands still seem foregin to the West, they are in fact democracies, and they are still learning exactly how the liberty and tolerance of such a form of government must be applied.
    Perhaps the case of Abdul Rahman can be seen as the first step toward the kind of democracy seen in the West. In this case, at least for now, the brutalism of orthodox Shariah law was not applied. That fact should give all of the citizens of democracy some hope for the future.
DLH
An interesting view on the subject:
Washington Post
I’m just as surprised at the writer’s surprise as he is at the Muslim world.
DLH