Rule of Law vs. Religious Freedom

Okay, fine, if you want to be totally pacifist about it. If this turns into a thread full of knee-jerk leftism, that itself says something, albeit not necessarily something particularly interesting. There are thousands if not millions of injustices around the world every day, why is this particular person so important that the West should undermine what fragile respect that country has for the rule of law, which is so key to a healthy civil society not to mention a robust state?

(Also, I could always argue that you can always intervene at the last moment, i.e., let the trial run its course and then if he is convicted, the west lobbies for an amnesty or whatever.)

You're right. No one case is so important, but every individual case is. What I mean is, once the case has been highlighted, you can't really let it go. But from a practical side, you can't intervene with every case of injustice. It makes more sense to persuade other countries to see these injustices and change their systems on their own.

But even that is kind of bogus, because the penalty for jaywalking is a fine and not getting hit by a car.

after 9/11, and all the calls for action in afganistan, she was immediately vehemently opposed to any action against the taliban (sanctions included).

i mean, countries have to find their own way. and, to be honest, not propping up "he may be a bastard, but at least he's our bastard" dictatorships, and other oppressive regimes, might be a start

the godwin clock is running.

That completely misses the point (which is admittedly unrealistically abstract).

1. I am assuming that France has separation of church and state, and further that
2. there is no explicit link between French laws, constitution, etc. and the Christian Bible.
Plus France has at least a couple hundred years of democracy, rule of law, and wholeheartedly embraces freedom of religion.

so, Hitler, Jews invoked...

Yes

No problem.

No

I have trouble articulating how I feel about this, principally because I think they're all wrong, i.e. religion=nonsense to me. But if our parts of the world have any influence at all in Afghanistan, we should be using it to stop them executing people for no good reason. Likewise, if we have any influence in the USA or any other state with capital punishment, we should use it. I don't mean we should invade. The whole thing about having already invaded Afghanistan – well it's been a bit cocked up and it was invaded for the wrong reasons, but I'm very anti-Taleban so I don't lose sleep over their overthrow. The 'collateral damage' does make me sick though.

hahahahaha.

As for forcing the Afghan gov to do what they're told but trying to do it in a nice, liberal-looking fashion, well I'm with Dan up there.

I don't think it's as simple as saying "the law is the law," because the Afghan constitution, from what I've read about this, seems to want it both ways: it's based partly on Sharia and apostasy is a capital offense, but at the same time there's something in it about religious freedom. Afghanistan is also a signatory to international human rights treaties that guarantee religious freedom, and for what it's worth, those, too, have the force of law. With contradictions like these, it's hard to make the case that executing the man, or even finding him guilty, would be a shining triumph of the rule of law.

xpost

So what has the coalition achieved in Afghanistan? FA. Still got a religiously intolerant country, still lawless in parts, opium crop still prevalent, radioactive ordnance littering the country and several billionb dollars wasted. So will pulling out improve the situation? I genuinely have no idea.

I think you mean opium crop more prevalent don't you?

Except that the conflict between German and British national interests was, to a great extent, predicated on them having radically different values.

If it were really a question of outright colonialism in Afghanistan, I would have no compunction about telling the Afghan government that this law is evil and forcing them to rescind it. What's the point of sending troops to kill and die abroad if we're too lily-livered to even affirm certain values. We've applauded them educating women again. We're happy that they aren't executing people in Kabul's football stadium for what to us seem like trivial religious offenses. Slavetrading and genital mutilation may be deeply rooted cultural trends for lots of people too but I'll be damned if misguided Western guilt will make me refrain from saying that I find them abhorrent, barbarous and absolutely inexcusable.

However, if Kharzai is seen to bow to foreign, infidel pressure, his head will soon be on the chopping block too. The real issue when we're faced with differences of values like this is how to persuade, not force, others to change their minds. Not because it's not worth the use of violence to stop evil but because it's not a lasting solution. We could force the Afghan government to back down on this with threats and that would save one man, but at the risk of emboldening religious conservatives and nationalists annoyed and humiliated at being pushed around, and of weakening the rule of law in a country where the law has much less sway than the whims of the local warlord. It's unfortunate, to say the least, that the Koran not only explicitly calls for the 'Way'(Sharia) to be the ultimate law of the land but that it also explicitly calls for death in the case of apostasy. It makes it harder for Muslims to fudge on the issue.

With contradictions like these, it's hard to make the case that executing the man, or even finding him guilty, would be a shining triumph of the rule of law.

OTM
issue.

(xpost)

Yes quite. Didn;t have time to expand on that and it's a thread in itself maybe

big xpost to beanz:

this persecution of Christians

To me, there's a significant difference between "persecution of Christians" and what is happening here, which is a specific case being pursued through a court of law, and pursuant to not simply a law, but a law grounded in the country's religion. And in a country that, while not an out and out theocracy, definitely has more explcit links between religion and government than people in the US, France, or the UK are used to.

Thanks for the link. However "violating international law" is really a red herring. "International law" is more often than not just a promise states make to "be good," often with little intention to do so. Or with a completely different interpretation of what compliance means. Don't get me wrong, Amnesty is great and all but an international government and an international police force (or a consistent willingness of the most countries to hold signatories to these promises)...

[In a competely unrelated note, you are really cute.]

xpost You're right about international law. In practical terms, it doesn't really exist in the same way that national laws do cos it's unenforceable except by some crude economic sanctions/invasion threats.

Why, thank you

Doesn't the total abolition of the death penalty belong in the canon of Western Values?

I'd prefer not to get too off-topic with the death penalty, but I (honestly) think part of the issue with this is that Christian values are imbedded deeply in Western Values, and with the New Testament comes the Old. When you scratch the surface, a lot of people remember "an eye for an eye." Perhaps that conflict is in some ways a parallel to Afghanistan's issue with honoring Islamic law and its "commitments" to international human rights conventions.

What I mean, I think, is that people sign on to the idea of "international law" knowing full well that neither of the two conditions that would really give it teeth apply, namely a) an international government/police force or b) the willingness of the individual countries who sign on to those laws to agree to punish people who violate them. Certainly international law is used on occasion, but it's more politics than anything else.

It's illegal to be Christian.

I'm nitpicking (and I do see your point) but I don't think it's illegal to be Christian per se. Repudiating Islam is, according to Islam, a crime punishable by death. I believe one of the Christian Ten Commandments is also about worshipping false idols, it's just that Moses' tables didn't say "And string up anybody who shall breaketh these commandments" at the end.

And moreover, it's not as if the government itself is going out and looking for people who have converted. Someone came to them (so the story goes) and said, "This person has violated this law and we want them prosecuted." I think that's quite an important point.

However, the history of humanity shows ten thousand examples of despotism for every example of genuine enlightenment. It's the Way of the World. (Who knew capital letters could be so much fun?)

Anyway, total tangent. I'm sure you're right that the conversion is the illegal bit.

xpost

i don't think that means "intervention" in the military sense, but it's entirely appropriate to use diplomatic and economic leverage. we do that all the time (though inconsistently) with countries we disagree with. and since the u.s. is largely responsible for the current state of affairs in afghanistan, we have a greater moral responsibility there than elsewhere.

The Rule of Law, when it is not tempered by a respect for the basic human rights of the minority, is just another term for despotism. It doesn't matter if the despot is an individual or a majority, it is still despotism, pure and simple. This should not be an issue of "left" or "right". It is absolutely fundamental.

Those are your values, not Islam's. (Although I think there is also some kind of "people of the Prophet"/religious freedom discussion in the Koran, but whatever.)

So you're saying that if Afghanistan wants to be a member in good standing of the community of nations, your number one condition is that they allow their citizens to think and believe whatever they want? That just doesn't seem right to me. That seems like a relatively sophisticated concept, one of the most difficult in the western system. Having a system that says "We openly declare that these are the principles according to which our society operates and everyone will be held equally to them" is much more important.

since the u.s. is largely responsible for the current state of affairs in afghanistan, we have a greater moral responsibility there than elsewhere

What if by imposing our will in something like this, we prove (yet again) that despite all of talk of democracy and freedom (and laws) the West is simply pushing its own agenda, and [chain of events] the country is thrown back into chaos. I mean worse than now. At some point that "responsibility" needs to entail realizing that elections and all that nonsense pale in the face of hunger, regular threats of violence, and so on.

If the people had the freedom and resources to leave, OK.

well you have to separate out the agendas. the "west" has lots of agendas, some of them in contention with others of them. the blood-and-treasure agenda that drove the invasion of iraq is different than the liberal-democratic agenda that drives groups like amnesty international. and i think it's too reductive to call the liberal-democratic agenda a "western" one, when there are liberal democratic reformers in an awful lot of nonwestern countries who would really appreciate the support of the "west" (and who tend to get it only when it coincides with some other agenda). i believe in the tenets of liberal democracy for a whole bunch of reasons, and i think they're worth advocating for. my preferred forms of advocacy do not include military intervention except in limited circumstances (i would have supported sending troops to rwanda, e.g., and we need more peacekeepers on the ground in darfur). there are a whole host of other ways to advocate for liberal democratic values, and i think liberal democracies ought to exercise them.

Well, yes, I guess that's true. If you don't like the rules, you're f***ed. Even in a democracy, as millions of Kerry and Gore voters in the US can testify. :(

It sounds crazy to any thinking person, particularly from this perspective, but I find that much more believable than "Let's get in there and get control of that oil."

It plays out totally differently, but somehow the seeds are the same as Amnesty's.

it's true that wolfowitz and co. -- and to a lesser degree cheney and rumsfeld -- believed that the best way to establish that base of power was to help construct an america-friendly democracy -- doing well by doing good, as it were. but this was basically a power play, everybody knew it was a power play, and that's why everybody reacted in the different ways they did. that cable pundits still profess some puzzlement about the "reasons" for invading iraq just tells you that none of these people have ever read any history of anything.

From what I've read by Sy Hersh this seems partially true. George Packer's The Assassin's Gate paints a devastating portrait of Wolfowitz, the only one of the Bush cabal who genuinely believed in the transformative power of American democracy in Iraq. Then his boss refuses to commit the necessary ground forces, his subordinate Doug Feith knows shit about rebuilding a country, and after a couple of years he gets a nice tenure sitting at the World Bank.

Hmm... I've got more to say but I need to think it through. (And go see Natalie Portman in a couple of hours, if I can get myself organized.) I don't dispute the imperialsm, either. Maybe I just attribute more blame to Bush personally, and I see him as more motivated by personal/historical concerns than greed.

I don't have any problem saying that a nation should never execute someone because of their religion. The question is only what to do about it and what can be done about it. Unfortunately the answer is not very much. The U.S. and other nations should by all means condemn the action and use diplomatic means to prevent it if possible.

If we were talking about the preventable execution of millions of people, on the other hand, I might support intervention, but we know that's a tricky thing these days.

the whole thing is news really just coz it gives lie to backup rationale #218 for the afghan war.

anyway, it sounds like the guy's not only not gonna be executed, he's going to be released. which almost certainly is because of american pressure, but what the hell. while we're there we might as well at least keep people from being executed for being the wrong religion.

yes, that's very helpful, and probably exactly the tack to take in trying to dissuade the Afghan government from executing this man.

that should, at the very least, be FOREIGN, pressure. comments by German, Italian, and British gov'ts were at least as strong as anything we saw from the US (albeit not, perhaps the US press, who were all over this).

plus we have no way of knowing what would have happened without the foreign pressure. i'm sure there were at least some people in the afghan gov't who would have seen this as abhorrent.

I wasn't addressing the Afghan government, and wasn't really trying to be helpful, just letting off steam.

I do think there is more of an inherent totalitarian streak in Islam than there is in Christianity and some other religions. Islam's founder punished apostates with the death penalty (if you accept the hadith as historical).