Reuters reports that the Afghan Christian Abdul Rahman may already have left the country. Meanwhile TIME magazine collects impossible-to-confirm allegations about Rahman’s treatment of his own family. One thing that is a part of every allegation — whether from his children or his parents — is his Christianity. As in, “He threatens us and we are all afraid of him and he doesn’t believe in the religion of Islam.” So, I’m not sure where that leaves us. The impression foreign observers have had of Afghan society in the past couple of weeks is a place where the great majority of people simply take it for granted that rejecting Islam is a crime that deserves death. If you’re accusing someone of a capital crime, it seems relatively small potatoes to throw in a few allegations of threats and beatings to go along with it. That said, the truth of the Rahman family’s domestic politics is just not going to be knowable (perhaps Afghanistan also needs an army of Dr. Phils?).

The broader point is that Americans, and doubtless many in the West generally, are left with a sour taste in their mouths after seeing a man threatened with death for saying, “I believe in Jesus Christ;” threatened, that is, not just by a mob or some crazed clerics in the Afghan hills, but by the judicial system of a democratic Afghanistan that Western soldiers have given their lives to help establish, and where they continue to risk their lives daily. Of-course there is also a narrower self-interest involved in keeping troops in Afghanistan and keeping al-Qaeda on the defensive, but narrower and more self-interested tactics might also be an option, after all. The ripples of Rahman’s case are only beginning to radiate, I think.

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