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mosque and state?
where native democracy is imposed by unelected foreigners and
peace is spread at the point of a sword, you might want to ask
Abdul Rahman. In a post-9/11 world rife with enough
contradictions to keep the Mad Hatter at an endless tea party,
Rahman may be the greatest living symbol of the bizarre string of
self-refuting assumptions that govern our new ideological
universe. His case may shake those assumptions to their bones.
Unfortunately, it may also cost him his life.
Rahman, a 41-year-old Afghani, is presently awaiting trial for
converting to Christianity, a charge which in Afghanistan could
carry the death penalty.
Yes, that Afghanistan. The one we liberated from religious
fundamentalist lunatics and handed over to… well, apparently to
people who put citizens to death for being of a different religion. If
this sounds just a bit vexing to you, you’re likely not alone. Even
news reports on the matter contained sentences that would have
had the Mad Hatter rechecking his prescription dosage.
“Rahman’s case illustrates a split over the interpretation of the
Afghan constitution,” said a story CNN’s website, ”which calls for
religious freedom while stating that Muslims who reject Islam can
be executed.”
Freedom fries anyone?
Of course, if this creative interpretation of religious liberty lacks a
certain Jeffersonian lilt - as well as a certain basic logical
consistency - the discerning observer may be detecting a subtle
but disturbing disconnect between the concept of freedom in the
places upon which we’ve generously chosen to bestow it and its
actual real-world practice in such locales. And it brings up a less
subtle question? What happens when you grant people freedom
and they don’t want it or at the very least don’t choose any
version of it recognizable to the sensibilities of McDonald’s-loving
Westerners?
Such queries are heretical beyond the bounds of good taste, of
course. Accepted neocon dogma is that if you give everyone in
the Third World sovereignty and a chance to dye their thumb
purple at the ballot box, they’ll soon be watching “American Idol,”
driving SUVs and demanding tax cuts. This may not be entirely
wrong. Perhaps “American Idol” and SUVs get high ratings
abroad. But so do Hamas and Sharia and there lies a very thorny
issue, one that brings to mind the recent cartooning controversy.
Can Western-style political values take hold without Western-
style social values? Can religious freedom survive without the
secular governing structure it naturally implies? Afghanistan’s
schizophrenic constitution seems to think so. So do a lot of
American religious conservatives for that matter, but neither
seem to have constructed much of a coherent policy. On this
then a more basic question could be posed: Can a society accept
freedom when its gifted by foreign blood and based on foreign
ideas? Would we have accepted the American Way of Life in
1776, if it had been, say, Spanish troops that had frozen their
digits off at Valley Forge? Could Santa Ana have been revered
as a Founding Father?
I don’t think its possible to make the argument that freedom given
by outsiders is never successful. After all, post-Hitler Germany
seems to be stable enough and Japan hasn’t raped Nanking
lately. Sometimes it does work. Taken as a species, people are
basically all the same - even when they’re different. Surely,
everyone is capable - and we pray, desirous - of accepting
freedom and the basic level of human decency that follows it.
After all, who really wants to live under the thuggish boot of a
gang of malcontents like the Taliban? But the “whens” and the
“hows” can create a maddening set of difficult details. The fact is
that culture matters, whether we want it to or not. A society’s
history and worldview affect the way they interpret the institutions
others have installed.
Increasingly, I think our leaders may be figuring that out.
I’d almost wager Abdul Rahman already knows it.
Reference: http://www.cnn.
com/2006/WORLD/meast/03/21/afghan.christian/index.html
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