The latest twist in the sad tale of Afghan religious pariah Abdul Rahman came on Wednesday when a religious adviser to president Hamid Karzai suggested that the charges of apostasy might be dropped because Rahman is mentally unfit to stand trial.
State prosecutor Sarinwal Zamari is quoted by Associated Press writer Daniel Cooney as saying that Rahman “is not a normal person. He doesn’t talk like a normal person.” By which I presume he means that Rahman doesn’t talk like a normal, non-converting-away-from-Islam-to-another-religion person. You know, somebody not crazy.
Afghan religious advisor Moayuddin Baluch said yesterday that Rahman would undergo a psychological examination to determine whether he’s fit for trial. No details about when that examination is to take place or how it might be conducted have been disclosed.
The word coming in through diplomatic back-channels has been that the government of Afghanistan, which is bound by its 2004 constitution to enforce traditional Islamic law, has been scrambling to find a way to quietly drop the case ever since Rahman’s arrest in February. If this is the way the Afghan government has chosen to extract itself from this human-rights and PR nightmare, we have to applaud their ingenuity, even while condemning the insane, medieval system of laws that made this situation possible in the first place.
The actual crime for which Abdul Rahman was arrested, incidentally? Possession of a Bible. Seriously.
A rally in support of Abdul Rahman and religious freedom in general will be held in front of the Afghan embassy at 2341 Wyoming Avenue NW at noon on Friday.
Update
Cam Edwards is now officially the laziest blogger ever. He just posted a transcript of a three-way chat he and his co-bloggers had on the Rahman question. The fact that it was an outstanding conversation does nothing to mitigate the fact that it was still a punk-ass cut-and-paste job.
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