Petr
04-01-2006, 02:17 AM
Finally some good sense! I hope this trend spreads and puts an end to this embarrassing spectacle of enthusiastic but ignorant Christians acting as neocon tools in their pursue of this banal secularist utopia, "making the world safe for democracy"...
On larger scale, I also hope that this will make more and more serious Christians to stop uncritically idolizing the very concept of democracy itself.
The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church - it often takes a concrete example like Abdul Rahman's near-martyrdom to make believers realize some harsh facts about the ways of this world.
http://www.forward.com/articles/7585
Evangelicals Reconsider Bush's Drive In Mideast
Case of Christian In Afghanistan Alarms Activists
By Ori Nir
March 31, 2006
WASHINGTON — With support for President Bush already at record lows, some Christian conservative leaders say that they are reconsidering their support for the administration's push to democratize the Muslim world.
Religious conservatives spent the past few weeks urging the White House to stop an Afghan court from executing Abdul Rahman, a convert to Christianity who is accused of violating Islamic law. After complaints from American officials, the case was dismissed. But the controversy left the Christian Right questioning the Bush administration's assumption that Muslim countries can become democratic even while adhering to Islamic law and Muslim customs.
"This has been a huge wake-up up call for a lot of people in the evangelical Christian population," said Jim Jacobson, president of conservative human rights organization Christian Freedom International. "The administration has been saying all along that democracy is the answer to all the problems. What people have seen in this case, however, is that democracy isn't the only answer and it does not resolve problems of religious discrimination and problems of the heart."
The relationship between democracy and religious rights in the Muslim world may become an election issue in coming months, according to Jacobson and other religious conservative activists.
"Certainly, in this election cycle, evangelical Christians are going to ask questions unlike before about our policy there," Jacobson said. "People who've been very, very supportive of the president's policies are asking questions like never before, and this should be a wake-up call for everyone."
The anger within the GOP base comes at a time when Bush is increasingly dependent on Christian conservative support for the Iraq War and for the administration's hawkish positions.
"That's why erosion in support among that camp is very significant," said Timothy Shah, a senior fellow in religion and world affairs at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
Support for the war has consistently been 20 percentage-points higher among evangelical Christians than among the general population, Shah said. At the same time, he added, evangelicals are twice as likely as other Americans (40% to 20%) to view the protection of religious freedom worldwide as a top American foreign policy goal.
Though particularly upset over recent events in Afghanistan, Christian conservative groups also say that the rights of religious minorities are violated by other allies of the United States, including Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia, as well as by Iraq. Theses conservative organizations tried to influence the new Iraqi and Afghan constitutions that the United States helped draft. To their dismay, however, in both cases the new constitutions ended up recognizing Shari'a, or Islamic law, as the main source of legislation.
"So far, [Christian conservative] opposition was theoretical," Shah said. "With the Abdul Rahman case, the other shoe dropped: There was a concrete case that illustrated the contradiction between a modern constitution and Islamic law."
Afghanistan does have a modern constitution, adopted with the help of the United States, that guarantees religious freedom. It stipulates, however, the dominance of Muslim law.
In a letter sent to the president last week, the chairman of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, Michael Cromartie, warned that in Afghanistan, "with a judicial system instructed to enforce Islamic principles and Islamic law, the door is open for a harsh, unfair, or even abusive interpretation of religious orthodoxy to be officially imposed, violating numerous human rights and stifling political dissent for Muslims and non-Muslims alike."
Cromartie, who was appointed by Bush to head the commission, is also the vice president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, an organization dedicated to reinforcing the bond between Judeo-Christian values and public policy. Earlier this month, in an opinion article published in the Philadelphia Inquirer on the eve of Bush's March 4 meeting with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in Islamabad, Cromartie called on Bush to urge Musharraf to protect religious minorities. He also argued that, despite Musharraf's promises more than five years ago to stop discrimination against religious minorities, "discriminatory legislation fosters an atmosphere of religious intolerance" in Pakistan. Cromartie stopped short of arguing that Bush was turning a blind eye to Pakistan's religious intolerance to advance the war on terrorism. Commissioners were disappointed to find out that Bush did not focus on religious freedom in his meeting with Musharraf, the Forward has learned.
Outrage among conservatives was even higher over Afghanistan, because of America's intense involvement there.
[B]"Americans have spent blood and treasure to help build democracy in Afghanistan and in Iraq and to combat terrorism, yet we find that people who are not Muslims can be killed [there] just for their religious belief. That's shocking," said Bill Saunders, human rights counsel at a leading conservative organization, the Family Research Council. "It is a failure that [members of the Bush administration] have to rectify," he said. Saunders added that if Muslim countries "don't democratize in a way that protects religious freedom, it's almost not worth doing."[/B]
An organization that typically fights abortion rights and gay rights, and cheers the president's conservative agenda, the Family Research Council is one of several conservative groups that last week openly doubted the president's success in spreading democracy in the Muslim world. The group organized a letter-writing campaign to the White House, calling for the president's intervention to save Abdul Rahman, a 41-year-old former medical aid worker who faced the death penalty under Afghanistan's Islamic laws against converting to another faith. After the dismissal of Rahman's case, many of Bush's supporters credited the president for saving the Afghan convert. A cartoon in the conservative Washington Times on Monday showed the president rescuing the Afghan convert — at the last moment — from a beheading.
The sense that Bush's idea of democracy differs from that of many of his conservative supporters has been on display since the case of the Afghan convert started making headlines last week. [B]"Democracy is more than purple thumbs," said Family Research Council President Tony Perkins in an outraged statement, alluding to recent elections in Iraq and in Afghanistan.[/B] He added: "Americans will not give their blood and treasure to prop up new Islamic fundamentalist regimes. Religious freedom is not just 'an important element' of democracy; it is its cornerstone."
[B]Anger over the Rahman case is a product of the frustration that has been building within the Christian conservative community for years, said Jeff King, president of Washington-based International Christian Concern. The organization assists persecuted Christians worldwide. "President Bush has been pushing Islam as a religion of peace," King said. "Many agree with him, because they want to be politically correct or to help the Republican party line, but the truth is that the world of Islam is persecuting Christians, and we should say what we think about it."[/B]
King said American Christians are gradually concluding that as the administration pushes for democracy in Muslim countries, it is focusing on holding elections at the expense of ensuring religious freedom and protecting the rights of religious minorities. If elections continue to benefit Islamist parties — as happened in Egypt and in the Palestinian territories — questions from Christian conservatives over the president's policy will only get tougher, King said.
Like other Americans, conservative Christians find the Afghan case particularly disturbing because of the administration's deep involvement in shaping Afghanistan's new regime and the White House's frequent attempts to paint Afghanistan as the successful story of a theocracy turned democracy, observers said. Also, the case of Rahman put a personal face on a widespread problem.
[B]The crisis over the case may have irreparably hurt both Bush and Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who is being criticized in his own country by those who accuse him of bowing to American pressure, Shah said.[/B]
"It may well be," the Pew scholar said, "that damage has already been done."
On larger scale, I also hope that this will make more and more serious Christians to stop uncritically idolizing the very concept of democracy itself.
The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church - it often takes a concrete example like Abdul Rahman's near-martyrdom to make believers realize some harsh facts about the ways of this world.
http://www.forward.com/articles/7585
Evangelicals Reconsider Bush's Drive In Mideast
Case of Christian In Afghanistan Alarms Activists
By Ori Nir
March 31, 2006
WASHINGTON — With support for President Bush already at record lows, some Christian conservative leaders say that they are reconsidering their support for the administration's push to democratize the Muslim world.
Religious conservatives spent the past few weeks urging the White House to stop an Afghan court from executing Abdul Rahman, a convert to Christianity who is accused of violating Islamic law. After complaints from American officials, the case was dismissed. But the controversy left the Christian Right questioning the Bush administration's assumption that Muslim countries can become democratic even while adhering to Islamic law and Muslim customs.
"This has been a huge wake-up up call for a lot of people in the evangelical Christian population," said Jim Jacobson, president of conservative human rights organization Christian Freedom International. "The administration has been saying all along that democracy is the answer to all the problems. What people have seen in this case, however, is that democracy isn't the only answer and it does not resolve problems of religious discrimination and problems of the heart."
The relationship between democracy and religious rights in the Muslim world may become an election issue in coming months, according to Jacobson and other religious conservative activists.
"Certainly, in this election cycle, evangelical Christians are going to ask questions unlike before about our policy there," Jacobson said. "People who've been very, very supportive of the president's policies are asking questions like never before, and this should be a wake-up call for everyone."
The anger within the GOP base comes at a time when Bush is increasingly dependent on Christian conservative support for the Iraq War and for the administration's hawkish positions.
"That's why erosion in support among that camp is very significant," said Timothy Shah, a senior fellow in religion and world affairs at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
Support for the war has consistently been 20 percentage-points higher among evangelical Christians than among the general population, Shah said. At the same time, he added, evangelicals are twice as likely as other Americans (40% to 20%) to view the protection of religious freedom worldwide as a top American foreign policy goal.
Though particularly upset over recent events in Afghanistan, Christian conservative groups also say that the rights of religious minorities are violated by other allies of the United States, including Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia, as well as by Iraq. Theses conservative organizations tried to influence the new Iraqi and Afghan constitutions that the United States helped draft. To their dismay, however, in both cases the new constitutions ended up recognizing Shari'a, or Islamic law, as the main source of legislation.
"So far, [Christian conservative] opposition was theoretical," Shah said. "With the Abdul Rahman case, the other shoe dropped: There was a concrete case that illustrated the contradiction between a modern constitution and Islamic law."
Afghanistan does have a modern constitution, adopted with the help of the United States, that guarantees religious freedom. It stipulates, however, the dominance of Muslim law.
In a letter sent to the president last week, the chairman of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, Michael Cromartie, warned that in Afghanistan, "with a judicial system instructed to enforce Islamic principles and Islamic law, the door is open for a harsh, unfair, or even abusive interpretation of religious orthodoxy to be officially imposed, violating numerous human rights and stifling political dissent for Muslims and non-Muslims alike."
Cromartie, who was appointed by Bush to head the commission, is also the vice president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, an organization dedicated to reinforcing the bond between Judeo-Christian values and public policy. Earlier this month, in an opinion article published in the Philadelphia Inquirer on the eve of Bush's March 4 meeting with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in Islamabad, Cromartie called on Bush to urge Musharraf to protect religious minorities. He also argued that, despite Musharraf's promises more than five years ago to stop discrimination against religious minorities, "discriminatory legislation fosters an atmosphere of religious intolerance" in Pakistan. Cromartie stopped short of arguing that Bush was turning a blind eye to Pakistan's religious intolerance to advance the war on terrorism. Commissioners were disappointed to find out that Bush did not focus on religious freedom in his meeting with Musharraf, the Forward has learned.
Outrage among conservatives was even higher over Afghanistan, because of America's intense involvement there.
[B]"Americans have spent blood and treasure to help build democracy in Afghanistan and in Iraq and to combat terrorism, yet we find that people who are not Muslims can be killed [there] just for their religious belief. That's shocking," said Bill Saunders, human rights counsel at a leading conservative organization, the Family Research Council. "It is a failure that [members of the Bush administration] have to rectify," he said. Saunders added that if Muslim countries "don't democratize in a way that protects religious freedom, it's almost not worth doing."[/B]
An organization that typically fights abortion rights and gay rights, and cheers the president's conservative agenda, the Family Research Council is one of several conservative groups that last week openly doubted the president's success in spreading democracy in the Muslim world. The group organized a letter-writing campaign to the White House, calling for the president's intervention to save Abdul Rahman, a 41-year-old former medical aid worker who faced the death penalty under Afghanistan's Islamic laws against converting to another faith. After the dismissal of Rahman's case, many of Bush's supporters credited the president for saving the Afghan convert. A cartoon in the conservative Washington Times on Monday showed the president rescuing the Afghan convert — at the last moment — from a beheading.
The sense that Bush's idea of democracy differs from that of many of his conservative supporters has been on display since the case of the Afghan convert started making headlines last week. [B]"Democracy is more than purple thumbs," said Family Research Council President Tony Perkins in an outraged statement, alluding to recent elections in Iraq and in Afghanistan.[/B] He added: "Americans will not give their blood and treasure to prop up new Islamic fundamentalist regimes. Religious freedom is not just 'an important element' of democracy; it is its cornerstone."
[B]Anger over the Rahman case is a product of the frustration that has been building within the Christian conservative community for years, said Jeff King, president of Washington-based International Christian Concern. The organization assists persecuted Christians worldwide. "President Bush has been pushing Islam as a religion of peace," King said. "Many agree with him, because they want to be politically correct or to help the Republican party line, but the truth is that the world of Islam is persecuting Christians, and we should say what we think about it."[/B]
King said American Christians are gradually concluding that as the administration pushes for democracy in Muslim countries, it is focusing on holding elections at the expense of ensuring religious freedom and protecting the rights of religious minorities. If elections continue to benefit Islamist parties — as happened in Egypt and in the Palestinian territories — questions from Christian conservatives over the president's policy will only get tougher, King said.
Like other Americans, conservative Christians find the Afghan case particularly disturbing because of the administration's deep involvement in shaping Afghanistan's new regime and the White House's frequent attempts to paint Afghanistan as the successful story of a theocracy turned democracy, observers said. Also, the case of Rahman put a personal face on a widespread problem.
[B]The crisis over the case may have irreparably hurt both Bush and Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who is being criticized in his own country by those who accuse him of bowing to American pressure, Shah said.[/B]
"It may well be," the Pew scholar said, "that damage has already been done."