Christian Death Sentence Monitor

One can't help but wonder how George Bush's base of fundamentalist Christians would view this unwholesome development, though they would likely have no qualms were the situation reversed:

An Afghan man is being prosecuted in a Kabul court and could be sentenced to death on a charge of converting from Islam to Christianity, a crime under this country's Islamic laws.

The defendant, 41-yer-old Abdul Rahman, was arrested last month after his family accused him of becoming a Christian ... Rahman was charged with rejecting Islam and his trial started Thursday.

In a statement meant to assauge concerns that erstwhile Muslims were being targeted specifically because they had converted to Christianianity, the judge assures us that just isn't the case:

It is the preservation of Islam that is the issue:We are not against any particular religion in the world. But in Afghanistan, this sort of thing is against the law. It is an attack on Islam.

Well, that is good news; generalised religious persecution but with a pre-existing condition clause. You might not be prosecuted if you have always been Christian, or Hindu or Jewish, but no conversions from Islam are allowed.

Abdul Rahman converted to Christianity 16 years ago while living outside Afghanistan. Under the Bush-installed democratic Karzai regime, Sharia law was adopted, or rather re-adopted, and now those unintended democracy dominoes consequences are making themselves known in quite an unpleasant way. The penalty for forsaking Islam? Death, of course.

[via Wash Park Prophet]