Independent Christian Voice has an update on the Afghan man who may narrowly escape facing death for refusing to deny Christ. I am giving this it's own post because what ICV has to say really isn't so much about Abdul Rahman as it is what President Bush knew about the Afghan constitution while simultaneously praising it. Go read it.
Charles Colson from BreakPoint says it best ...
The irony is inescapable: This is the country that we rid of the Taliban because of its religious oppression. This is the country in which we have spent at least $70 billion to establish a free democratic government. This is the country whose freedom cost us three hundred American lives and eight hundred casualties. And this is the country that is preparing to execute a man for becoming a Christian after he witnessed other Christians caring for his countrymen.
Is this the fruit of democracy? Is this why we have shed American blood and invested American treasure to set a people free? What have we accomplished for overthrowing the Taliban? This is the kind of thing we would expect from the Taliban, not from President Karzai and his freely elected democratic government.
I have supported the Bush administration's foreign policy because I came to believe that the best way to stop Islamo-fascism was by promoting democracy. But if we can't guarantee fundamental religious freedoms in the countries where we establish democratic reforms, then the whole credibility of our foreign policy is thrown into serious question.
Hat tip: Terra Extraneus
It seems to me that Mr. Colson wasn't aware of the wisdom offered by Benjamin Franklin:
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote."
In it's purest ideological form, democracy is the rule of the majority. Unfortunately, these days, we seem to overlook the fact that the majority isn't always in the right. It's a shame we seemed to forget to impart that particular truth to the democracies we sought to build elsewhere.
In a discussion more than a year ago on this blog, I tried to explain the concept of culture and how what we are doing over there was not going to obtain the democracies this administration claims it is trying to achieve. It would be like Iraq, or a country like it, trying to change our country to fit their ideal of how a country should be run.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of people that don't seem to get it that America is what some of these countries consider to be everything that is wrong in the world. We are too permissive. We allow people the freedom to be whatever they want to be. We give people the freedom to worship as they choose and sin all they want. Islam doesn't and we aren't going to change that just like a bunch of Muslims couldn't come over here and change us.