Washington – An Afghan Muslim man who converted to Christianity now seems unlikely to be tried or executed for the crime of rejecting Islam, thus heading off a rapidly escalating confrontation between the Kabul government and its Western military and financial backers.
But the case of Abdul Rahman, 46, officials and experts said, has highlighted a raging struggle in Afghanistan over the role of Islam in the law and public policy.
It also has exposed a wide gap in values between the conservative Muslim country and the international community that has helped defend and rebuild it as a postwar democracy.
“This is an extremely sensitive issue here, and an extremely serious issue back home,” Abdullah Abdullah, Afghanistan’s foreign minister, said in an interview in Washington on Wednesday. “Every time we have a case, it is like an alarm. These contradictions will not go away with one or two cases.”
Diplomats in several nations said Wednesday they had been assured Rahman would not be executed, and Afghan diplomatic sources confirmed that.
