Theology of the Body: Chains: Italian Asylum for Abdul Rahman

Friday, April 07, 2006

Chains: Italian Asylum for Abdul Rahman

Remember them that are in chains, as bound with them;
and them which suffer adversity,
as being yourselves also in that body.
Hebrews 13:3

My dear friend S sent this to me from the Associated Press late last week.

KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghanistan's parliament demanded Wednesday that the government prevent a man who faced the death penalty for abandoning Islam for Christianity from being able to flee the country. Italy granted asylum to Abdul Rahman, 41. Rahman was released from prison Monday after a court dropped charges of apostasy against him because of a lack of evidence and suspicions he may be mentally ill. President Hamid Karzai had been under heavy international pressure to drop the case.

The Italian government granted asylum to Rahman after Muslim clerics called for his death.
Rahman was put on trial last week for converting 16 years ago while he was a medical aid worker for an international Christian group helping Afghan refugees in Pakistan. He was carrying a Bible when arrested and faced the death penalty under Afghanistan's Islamic laws.
The case caused an outcry in the United States and other nations that helped oust the hard-line Taliban regime in late 2001 and provide aid and military support for Karzai.

Muslim clerics condemned Rahman's release, saying it was a "betrayal of Islam," and threatened to incite violent protests. Some 500 Muslim leaders, students and others gathered Wednesday in a mosque in southern Qalat town and criticized the government for releasing Rahman, said Abdulrahman Jan, the top cleric in Zabul province.
He said the government should either force Rahman to convert back to Islam or kill him.
"This is a terrible thing and a major shame for Afghanistan," he said.

...In my recent apologetic vein, I say let us rejoice that Christianity is not a religion that demands submission from all others through coercive force, nor a religion which refuses its own people and the rest of the world the freedom and dignity to disbelieve. Our faith leaves the individual free to respond to the gracious call of God- and then leaves the judgment to God Himself. May all intrusive and violent ways of forcing belief recede from our free God's free universe. As S put it, "Choosing your own beliefs, whatever they are, just isn't grounds for death."