The vast majority of the time I agree with mark Steyn, but I think it should be remembered that those foreign soldiers are in Afghanistan because planes flew into the World Trade Center and not just because of some altruistic compulsion to bring democracy to Afghanistan. We ignored years of warfare there that drove Afghanistan further and further backward and would probably still be ignoring it if AlQaida had picked some other country to call home.

I certainly think this case makes it plain that there is a long way to go before Afghanistan is "western" but if we just abandon the place because of this situation I also think the Taliban would consider that a real victory.

One of the reasons I was bothered by the whole Dubai fiasco was that I felt we had so few friends in the region that alienating one of them would be self defeating. It is obvious that the Islamists want to do everything they can to drive a wedge between the Muslim world and the rest of humanity and playing the victim is their most treasured ploy. Now they will say we are trying to attack Islam again in this case, which is not true...but when we refuse to treat an ally like Dubai with the same trust we would show the communist Chinese and their company Cosco, we feed their paranoia.

I wish there was someway to meet in the middle in a place where all people could be judged fairly, but I am beginning to wonder if that is possible.
Terrye | Email | Homepage | 03.25.06 - 2:33 pm | #

If Rahman had been born a Christian, he'd be allowed to live in dhimmitude aka apartheid, the abusive & often brutal condition of infidels under Muslim law (as in Muslim-ruled Spain, despite contemporary attempts to whitewash it as a golden age of tolerance - what rot!). It's the converting from Islam to Christianity that dooms him
beautifulatrocities | Email | Homepage | 03.25.06 - 3:55 pm | #

What is there to say? Every day it becomes clearing that Islam is a very sick religion. I wish it were reformable, but the evidence does not seem to suppport such a hope.
Jan | Email | Homepage | 03.25.06 - 6:42 pm | #

I believe that fundamentalist Islam is incompatible with liberal democracy, but in the same way that most fundamentalist religions are. Let us not forget the execution of Michael Servetus for his Unitarian beliefs by the Calvinists in Geneva. The problem is fundamentalism, not particular religions.

Christianity modernized, and Islam will, too. There are already liberal Muslims in the US and Europe.

as in Muslim-ruled Spain, despite contemporary attempts to whitewash it as a golden age of tolerance - what rot!

Surely not tolerant by modern standards, but considering that people that differed from the local religion were routinely executed elsewhere in Europe and the world at the time, I would say that yeah, it was pretty tolerant.
Ludd | Email | Homepage | 03.25.06 - 6:44 pm | #

What is there to say? Every day it becomes clearing that Islam is a very sick religion. I wish it were reformable, but the evidence does not seem to suppport such a hope.

Someone may have said the same thing in Medieval Europe. All Islam needs is time.
Ludd | Email | Homepage | 03.25.06 - 6:46 pm | #

Well if we are going to use history as an example we could look to the KKK and their burning crosses.

Islam will have to reform or face constant battle and over time that might completely destroy it.

But we have to keep in mind that we are not just in Afghanistan to reform Islam, we are there to fight AlQaida.
Terrye | Email | Homepage | 03.25.06 - 6:49 pm | #

There were regular revolts, pogroms, & massacres under Muslim ruled Spain, as well as constant raids to bring back slaves. But in contemporaray Europe, there's been an intellectual drive to whitewash this period for political purposes, to justify a large unassimilated Muslim presence in Europe as a return to a mythical multicultural society. This is all part of the Islamization of Europe, which of course is not matched by any corresponding Europeanizing or liberalizing of Arab thugocracies, nor would any Islamic country tolerate a large minority population except as serfs, slaves, & second-class citizens. Islam = apartheid
beautifulatrocities | Email | Homepage | 03.25.06 - 7:35 pm | #

Doc,

You are starting to get it. Wherevere Islam is in power brutality and barbarism result. No exceptions in its 1500 year history. I once thought all men wanted freedom and liberty, but no longer. Muslims want submisson to Allah, not freedom. Christiandom once pushed it back to it homelands in Arabia; do we modern Westerners have the will do to the same? Europe is probably already lost.
John | Email | Homepage | 03.25.06 - 10:10 pm | #

I think one of the things that bothers me the most is the ability of people to treat all i billion Muslims as if they were the Borg.

I am not justifying anything these people have done but I find the tendency to talk about all Muslims as if they were a disease or soemthing to be frightening. What is next, a final solution of our own?
Terrye | Email | Homepage | 03.25.06 - 10:13 pm | #

When Shari'a was first formulated, nobody even dreamed that Muslims would be calling fellow Muslims apostates merely for not adhering to a particular subset of Wahhabi Islam. Read up sometime: Wahhabiism is a modern movement within Islam, not a return to Islam's roots, much as it may claim to be. What the Afghan courts do to the Christian convert is exactly what they will be asked to do to the "wrong" kind of Muslim. I have my doubts that the Afghan courts really want to open that can of worms.

At the same time, if they refused to take the case, or pooh-poohed the charges, the Salafis would make fifty kinds of political hay out of it, declaring the Karzai government all kinds of apostate, giving the Taliban-lovers all the excuse they need not to obey the government in Kabul.
RS | Email | Homepage | 03.26.06 - 12:15 am | #

Democracy, without liberty, is just another form of tyranny.
The Afghan Cobstitution has freedom of religion in it, but if they insist that sharia law trumps it, then the Constitution is meaningless.
The US should be promoting Republic's that promote liberty.
Sure, Afghanistan is better now, than under the taliban, but it's still unacceptable, if they ignore liberty and individual right's.
Ben USN (Ret) | Email | Homepage | 03.26.06 - 5:44 am | #

Terrye - whatever Islam once was, it has been taken over by the aggressive "cell" and they are starting to take over the entire body of the world. Whether you like it or not, that is a lot like a malignant cancer that is eating away at all the civilization and progress of humanity. Maybe you want to live in the medieval world they inhabit, but I don't. Bush has been giving the moderates every possible chance to stand up for their religion. They are silent--at least in comparison to the malignant portions. Too bad.
Star | Email | Homepage | 03.26.06 - 8:56 am | #

>>Bush has been giving the moderates every possible chance to stand up for their religion. They are silent--at least in comparison to the malignant portions. Too bad.>>

It hasn't been very long, as these things go. It seems to me that there are two options...back out completely and isolate ourselves from Muslim countries as much as possible, or continue dealing with them. Isolation means that Europe is probably gone. We may have the American continent, but only as long as we can prevent immigration of _any_ Muslims, and any that are here already may have to be tested or gotten rid of - assuming the "cancer" analogy. South America is ripe for Muslim infiltration - if they're not there already. Once in the America's, it seems unlikely that we can stop them from coming to the US. So it seems to me that we have to deal with them and hope that continuous contact, pressure and persuasion will eventually bring them to a point where they can live with a freedom that allows choice. I don't know. They don't have a central binding religious voice, so any Imam that is extraordinarily persuasive can wreak havoc.
Change is going be be _very_ slow - generations at least. If we walk away, there won't be change - just continual conflict. What we see now is certainly imperfect, but it's a beginning. They too have a slippery slope - if this man is judged as crazy, maybe the next one will be too. And the next - till it's routine...anyone converting to Christianity is crazy - but we don't kill him. Eventually, they won't even prosecute it. I hope.
Part of the equation, I think, is making their lives better so that "escape" to the afterlife doesn't look like quite such a good deal. As it is, for many, if not most, their lives here are so miserable that they really believe that life is worthless. Changing that will take time too.
suek | Email | Homepage | 03.26.06 - 11:42 am | #

Posting a link to AmericanThinker where there is a very good article on this today. Wonder if the link will appear or disappear!

http://tinyurl.com/qsagk
suek | Email | Homepage | 03.26.06 - 12:10 pm | #

Two years ago I thought Islam was just another religion.

After four years of self education from many sources I know that calling Islam "a religion" is like calling IBM a company that "makes computers." (in case some of you don't know, that is just a part of what IBM [is] does.

Islam is a cult. A cult that directs, instructs, demands pacific behaviour, attitudes and beliefs. It leaves nothing to chance, nothing for the believer to be confused about or any leeway in those decisions.

The different sects of Islam vary on a few additions to the Qur'an that have been made by various Mullahs over the years and by other sect pacific methods of expression of faith, but the basic Qur'an is the same for all.

There is only two kinds of people according to the Qur'an. The Believer and the Unbeliever. There are no steps, places, degrees of belief. There are no excuses, conditions or ways to be "moderate", "liberal", "re-formist" believer of Islam.

If fact to even consider reforming Islam means a sentence of death under the Qur'an.

I could go on and list hundreds of things that you don't know about Islam. But it's easier to list just one book to read. It is not inclusive, but it is a "primer" on Islam. It is Written By Robert Spencer and is called "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam". There are many books by great authors about Islam. There are many websites about Islam, both pro and con.

I recommend that everyone educate themselves about Islam, as we are going to either have to do one of three things in conjunction with it.

Try and co-exist with it.
Destroy it.
Convert to it.

Needless to say, I don't think it can be co-existed with and I don't plan on converting or allowing my children or grandchilden to.

Papa Ray
West Texas
USA
Papa Ray | Email | Homepage | 03.26.06 - 3:01 pm | #

Papa Ray...
Once again I agree with you. I started in the same place, and have come to the same conclusions. My husband served in Saudi for a year and doesn't agree. Imo, he was in contact with people in situations where there was no conflict and no reason for such questions to arise. He considers it "just a custom we should respect" that he was unable to attend Mass for the year he was there, and that wives(various nationalities, but all of western nations) of men employed by the oil companies couldn't drive vehicles and that they all more or less had to stay on their foreign compounds... And this was about 40 years ago. I had a discussion with one of my sons this AM, and he is where you and I began...he thinks I'm off the deep end.
I think maybe I need to buy Spencer's book in bulk...
suek | Email | Homepage | 03.26.06 - 8:07 pm | #

Sanity,
May 23, 1844 is the date, in the year promised by Jesus of Nazareth (Matt 24:14, Luke 21:24, Matt 24:15) that the first of the 'Twin Candlesticks'/'Twin Stars'/'Twin Lights' promised in Revelations came.

His title was The Bab, the Gate, through Whom would come the Lord of Hosts.

One of the early believers in the Divine station of The Bab was The Glory of God; unschooled (because when the professors tested Him, He answered all their questions courteously, succinctly and correctly), known for His generosity, compassion and loving, intelligent, scrupulously honest character.

Although thrown into the deepest, filthiest prison of the Iranian Muslim clergy and freighted down with 90-pounds of iron collar designed to kill Him, He survived 3 months in the stygian, ankle deep detritus, His neck gallingly collared and His feet in stocks... and He began His redemptive ministry THERE, teaching murderers and violent human-refuse to chant praises to God!

His coming, long scoffed at and denied by Christian and Muslim clergy alike, is now coming into greater clarity and brightness, as the shadows cast by those who reject Him grow darker.

The Lord of Hosts is the ONLY One Who reforms Islam, but the name for this reformed, pure Faith of God is a New Name (Rev 2:17, 3:12), not 'Christian' or 'Muslim'.

The Faith of God is called Baha'i (Dedicated to the Glory of God), and headquartered in Haifa, Israel, on Mount Carmel.

THIS is feared by Islam, THIS can redeem and transform hundreds of millions of ordinary Muslims, so their blind, hate-filled and God-rejecting mullahs and imams CANNOT hijack their faith... Baha'u'llah, the Glory of God, has eliminated all clergy, all humans in this Day have the right to investigate their relationship with God WITHOUT clergy.

Google May 23, 1844.
Karridine | Email | Homepage | 03.27.06 - 7:39 pm | #

islam isn't sick.

u r.
k | Email | Homepage | 03.29.06 - 1:09 pm | #

And Islam, now overwhelmed with future shock, itself has only three alternatives:

1) Die out, unable to cope with anything other than the 7th Century Arab tribal culture for which it was optimized. (Or alternately, be killed off by those others in total war.)

2) Change in some way to be survivable and compatible with this changed reality.

3) Kill off all Infidels and force any & all survivors to become 7th Century Arab tribesmen. (aka Jihad)

We know which of the three al-Qaeda & associates have chosen. Which shall it be?
Ken | Email | Homepage | 03.30.06 - 7:39 pm | #