I missed this story yesterday, but Michelle Malkin rightly noted it and it has been picked up around the blogosphere. An Afghan man faces the death penalty for the "crime" of conversion to Christianity in a case that underscores the difficulty of preaching tolerance among the intolerant:

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 the country's Islamic laws, a judge said yesterday.

Abdul Rahman, 41, was arrested last month after his family accused him of becoming a Christian, Judge Ansarullah Mawlavezada said. Mr. Rahman was charged with rejecting Islam, and his trial was held 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, Judge 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."

Rahman has shown courage in his stance; most defendants in this kind of prosecution would either deny their Christianity (a number of these accusations turn out to be false, anyway) or would have taken the offer given Rahman to renounce his new faith and embrace Islam once more. Rahman has refused, acknowledging his conversion while traveling overseas, and intends on remaining a Christian the rest of his life ... which may be shorter than he first thought, thanks to the draconian Shari'a that Afghanistan uses as a basis for its penal code.

This shows the difficulty of introducing liberty to a region which has never had that tradition and underscores the generational effort it will take to reduce the theocratic influence on government in Southwest Asia. We rightly celebrate the deposing of the Taliban because of their brutal oppression of the Afghan people and their support of terror. It doesn't mean that the Taliban didn't have some support among the people for their slavish dedication to Shari'a as public law, especially in the area of religious conformity. Muslims have always been singular in their use of violence to both convert and to keep their own from converting, and this case is just the latest demonstration.

The West should do whatever it can to assist Rahman, but it treads on dangerous ground. If the Coalition is seen to interfere with the case, it may provide a propaganda bonanza for the Taliban, which has warned that the effort to liberate Afghanistan amounted to nothing more than a Fifth Crusade to destroy Islam. It might be easier to ask for Rahman's extradition rather than demanding an end to his persecution. It wouldn't make much of a precedent, considering the number of native Christians in the country number only in the hundreds, or possibly less than that.

However, this case requires that we at least speak out against the prosecution of Rahman and express our own conviction that religious freedom is a birthright to all people wherever they may live. If pressing for action would be counterproductive to Rahman's fate, then at least our government should be holding this case up as an injustice to the natural rights on which we base our own sense of justice. If we do not stand up for Rahman even in this manner, we perpetuate the myth that religious freedom only belongs in Europe and the Americas.

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