As the tumultuous case of an Afghan religious convert wound down with his flight to Italy, experts said that its reverberations – and American perceptions of Islam – center on the collision of nuanced religious doctrine and hardball politics.
At issue, they say, is whether the furor over 41-year-old Abdul Rahman’s conversion from Islam to Christianity, with clerics calling for a death sentence, was driven by Shariah law or efforts to undermine Aghanistan’s pro- Western government.
“We can go to another country and install democracy there, but can we really change things?” asked Mohammad Noorzai, executive director of the Colorado Muslim Council. “Can we change the culture, the religion, the way people are? Those changes have to come from within.”
Afghan President Hamid Karzai was under pressure from the West to free Rahman and from local clerics to execute him for apostasy – renouncing his Muslim faith.
Prosecutors released the former aid worker for insufficient evidence and suspected mental incompetence. On Wednesday, he surfaced in Italy, where he was offered asylum.
The clerics agitating for Rahman’s execution may have been trying to box Karzai into a difficult choice or press for more conservative rule, said Thomas Gouttierre, director of the Center for Afghanistan Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
“Anything they can do to make the government uncomfortable, or raise questions about a constitution they want to be less progressive, is done for a political agenda,” said Gouttierre, who recently returned from Afghanistan.
The Rahman incident has reignited discussion of religious freedom, particularly in predominantly Muslim nations such as Afghanistan.
“There will be those who jump on the bandwagon and start bashing Islam again, without realizing the nuances that characterize Islamic law,” said Liyakat Takim, associate professor in the University of Denver’s department of religious studies.
Liyakat stressed the belief that the Koran prescribes no death penalty for leaving the faith. “It’s a highly contentious issue,” he said. “You’ll find some different interpretations among Muslims, even in America.”
Noorzai, for example, contends most scholars would agree the Afghan clerics correctly interpreted Shariah, though harsh sanctions such as death are almost never imposed.
Imam Ibrahim Kazerooni, a Shiite cleric who participates in an interfaith project at Denver’s St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral, said historical context is key to interpreting Koranic verses.
The verses on apostasy cited by Afghan clerics are rooted in a 1,400- year-old political climate in which a growing Muslim community feared infiltration and saw conversion equal to treason, Kazerooni said.
Rahman’s conversion to Christianity provides no basis for such a narrow, literalist interpretation, Kazerooni said.
“I’d consider this act – trying a person – illegal, contrary to Islam,” Kazerooni said. “A person has a right to decide what he wants to follow. ”
U.S. politicians, including President Bush, may well have been playing to their base in pressing the Afghan government to release Rahman, said Robert Seiple, former U.S. ambassador-at- large for international religious freedom under President Clinton.
“But the larger issue by far that can’t be trumped is that Rahman had an inalienable human right to choose his own faith,” said Seiple, president of the Council for America’s First Freedom, which focuses on religious freedom.
The Afghan government and constitution must be seen as works in progress, Seiple said. Reform isn’t immediate; “it takes place over a long period of time.”
Staff writer Kevin Simpson can be reached at 303-820-1739 or ksimpson@denverpost.com.
