A Convert's Plight

By Julie Rawe

Renouncing one's Muslim faith in Afghanistan is a crime punishable by death. When news trickled out of Kabul late last month that a former aid worker named Abdul Rahman, 41, was on trial for converting to Christianity, the U.S. government responded with dismay--but not much else. The case "is not under the competence of the U.S.," Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns said. "If there is to be a trial, we hope that it's going to be transparent." That was the diplomatic equivalent of shrugging and saying, "What more can we do?"

The answer came swiftly from President Bush's outraged Christian base: a lot more. Religious leaders in the U.S. assailed the White House, with activists like Jay Sekulow--who helped rally support for Bush's Supreme Court nominees--bombarding Karl Rove's evangelical liaison with e-mail. Within 48 hours, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had called Afghan President Hamid Karzai and urged Afghanistan's Foreign Minister, who was visiting Washington, to spare Rahman. President Bush declared, "We have got influence in Afghanistan, and we are going to use it to remind them that there are universal values." A White House official insists that "our displeasure could not have been made clearer."

Still, the right-wing furor over the Rahman case is likely to reverberate. To many Americans, the fact that Christian converts face prosecution in a country "liberated" by the U.S. in 2002 has bolstered the perception that the divide between Islam and the West is growing. Ansarullah Mawlavezada, the judge in charge of Rahman's fate, defends the independence of the Afghan judiciary. "In the West you allow two women to get married because that is the law, and I respect that. In Afghanistan we have Shari'a law, and the people respect and accept this," he told TIME last week. "Shari'a law is very clear." Perhaps, but how it can coexist with Western values is not.

With reporting by Reported by Mike Allen, Rachel Morarjee, Elaine Shannon