Death sentence for Afghan Christian shows hollowness of Bush's democracy

You know how Bush keeps bragging about the budding "democracy" in Afghanistan that he created?

Well, now he has to tapdance around the fact that the Afghan government is killing Christians, and that country's Constitution (which Bush praises so frequently) condones it!

From News Hounds:
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Nothing gets Fox News' dander up like a persecuted Christian, but what happens when the persecuting is coming from a brand spanking new democracy that their pet president has enshrined? Fuzzy journalism, that's what happens.

The "Dayside" couple Juliet Huddy and Mike Jerrick on Tuesday (March 21, 2006) tried to deal with the case of Abdul Rahman, a 41-year-old Afghani who faces death because he converted to Christianity. Jerrick correctly pointed out that capital punishment for rejecting Islam is permitted under the constitution of the "government we helped put in place" to replace the Taliban.

[...]

But the case should come as no surprise to Americans. The Constitution that the Bush administration has been bragging about as a great step forward for the Middle East is founded on Islamic law.

[...]

So while the Bush administration was telling Americans that Afghan was a democracy, what they weren't saying was that it was a democracy with no protections for minority rights -- sort of the same kind of democracy they would like to install here at home, just pure majority rule. where those with the most votes run rough shod over their opponents.

Sure, article 2 [of the Afghan Constitution] says followers of other religions are free to exercise their faith, but only "within the limits of the provisions of law." And "no law can be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam," according to Article 3, otherwise known as Catch-22.

Bush was so anxious to prove that he had installed a "democracy" in Afghanistan that he has never paid much attention to the details. When people have questioned the success of this new democracy, Bush has resorted to phony claims that his critics don't believe people in the Middle East are capable of self-government.
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