(Thanks to LC Mike M as well as LC & IB Bareknucklepolitics)

The brilliant analysts at al-Roto-Reuters have looked into the case of the Afghani man facing the death penalty for converting from Islam and concluded that it’s just the same as the Cameljockey Cartoon Clusterfuck.

ROME (Reuters) - The strong Western response to a threatened death sentence for an Afghan convert to Christianity looks something like a mirror image of the Muslim reaction to the Prophet Mohammad caricatures printed in the European press.

Except that it doesn’t, of course, but when was the last time that the fabulously unbiased “journalists” at al-Roto-Reuters let facts get in the way of a propaganda story?:

There have been no riots or sackings of Afghan embassies, unlike the violence that marked the uproar in Muslim countries after the Danish cartoons were published,

That would seem to be enough to prove that your “mirror image” doesn’t exist, wouldn’t it? Oh, but here it comes, as predictable as STDs at a liberal campus:

…but the shock and mutual incomprehension expressed in both cases are similar.

Yep. The muslims are shocked, outraged and driven to murder and vandalism by freedom of expression, and the West is shocked and driven to calls for clemency by a man being threatened with execution because of his religious beliefs.

The similarities are striking indeed.

We’ll have to save this “report” in case anybody ever asks us what moral relativism is and why it’s such an abomination. Q.E.D.

The difference lies in the issues at stake.

…and has absolutely nothing to do with the actual nature of the reactions. Nope, none whatsoever.

In the cartoons row, Muslims stressed the sanctity of Mohammad, whom they say nobody — even non-Muslims — can criticize. The subtext was resentment against perceived Western prejudice against Islam.

Now, Western governments and societies are speaking out for religious freedom and against the death penalty.

Bzzztttt… Wrong again. His Majesty is speaking out loudly, but he is most definitely not speaking out against the death penalty, so don’t you even think about hijacking his outrage to further your own pet peeves. That would be as intellectually dishonest as, say, polling Americans on whether they thought Bush was doing a good job or not and then stating that the once answering “no” were against the war.

Hmm… Whatever made us think of using that example?

The fact many Western troops now help defend the Afghan government against al Qaeda and Taliban remnants heightened the outrage in the West.

Well, we did go in to get rid of a medieval, theocratic regime, and now it looks like our soldiers have been made bodyguards of another one. That tends to tick a few of us off. Odd how that works, no?

Amin Farhang, the Afghan economy minister who lived in exile in Germany for 22 years before returning to Kabul in 2001, saw the parallels and warned against any escalation.

“Following the row about the cartoons, which has cost so many lives, we should look calmly at things and work for a fair solution,” he told the German daily Koelner Stadt-Anzeiger.

But he stressed the gulf between western-style freedoms and traditional Muslim societies that consider conversion from Islam to be an insult punishable by death. ” Afghanistan cannot switch suddenly from one extreme to the other,” he said.

If that is so, then Afghanistan can unceremoniously go fuck itself. Oh no, we’re not demanding that Afghanistan turn itself into California in the next 48 hours (we’ve already got one too many of those anyway), but what we are demanding is that they immediately let go of their cherished pastime of lopping off the heads of anybody who dare have a thought of their own. THAT isn’t open to negotiations.

One of the reasons we went in was the Taliban’s predilection for murdering anybody they perceived to be different, such as ourselves, and if the Afghanis don’t understand that we didn’t sacrifice blood and treasure just to get a different set of mullahs, same as the old mullahs, then we suggest that we pull out and level the place permanently. That’s the deal. Take it or leave it.

The uproar sparked off by the case of Abdur Rahman, now on trial in Kabul for renouncing Islam, showed that Westerners saw religious freedom as a norm and not an extreme.

“It is deeply troubling that a country we helped liberate would hold a person to account because they chose a particular religion over another,” President George Bush said on Wednesday.

If the freedom to believe and worship as you please as long as it doesn’t harm anybody else makes us “extremists”, then we’re as extreme as they come and damn proud of it too.

Some critics suggested NATO states withdraw their troops from Afghanistan. A few even suggested that Western troops kidnap Abdur Rahman and bring him along when they leave.

And how extreme is that? Saving somebody from execution. We should be ashamed of ourselves.

Among the strongest critics are evangelical Christians in the United States, a core constituency that has backed Bush so far on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“How can we congratulate ourselves for liberating Afghanistan from the rule of jihadists only to be ruled by Islamists who kill Christians?” Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council asked.

Oh no, it’s the American Taliban again, calling for freedom of religion! Call Kevin Phillips and let him know that the American Theocracy is right around the corner, please!

Another leading figure, Charles Colson, said: “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.”

Well, no. But our credibility as far as bringing freedom to oppressed people certainly is.

Canada’s top Anglican prelate, Archbishop Andrew Hutchinson, said of the Islamic punishment for apostasy that Rahman faces: “I’m absolutely horrified to think that this kind of fanatical literalism would be applied in this day and age.”

European newspapers ran bitter commentaries. Munich’s Sueddeutsche Zeitung said Kabul was “tolerant like the Taliban.” Die Welt in Berlin wrote that Afghanistan faced “the dark ages of barbarity” if it executed Rahman.

“We have a duty not to cooperate in bringing back the burning of heretics at the stake,” the Dutch daily Trouw wrote. Milan’s Corriere della Sera said Western states helping Afghanistan should launch a movement to reform Islam there.

Damn. Even the EUrodhimmis are protesting!

In Denmark, Jyllands-Posten, the daily that first ran the Mohammad cartoons, quoted Syrian-born member of parliament Naser Khader saying: “If necessary, Danish troops should liberate Abdur Rahman and Denmark should offer him asylum.

“This matter underlines that sharia (Islamic law) must be fought wherever it exists,” he said.

Once again, a muslim is calling for reform while the dhimmis of al-Roto-Reuters are calling for tolerance of Islamofascism.

France’s Marianne magazine made clear Western critics might not be satisfied if the Kabul court arranges to avoid the death sentence by declaring Rahman insane and unfit for trial.

“If he is not tried, he will probably end up in a psychiatric hospital, which for a man of sound mind is sometimes worse than death,” it commented.

Agreed. If they decide to save face and pander to Islamofascism by declaring him “unfit for trial” we can live with it, as long as he’s free to go. But if they decide to lock him up in an asylum, all bets are off. First thing we ought to do would be to pull out Hamid Karzai’s bodyguard. If he turns out to love the mullahs more than he loves freedom, he should be left to fend for himself.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 23rd, 2006 at 12:08 pm and is filed under Idiotarians, Journaljizzm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.