Execute Abdul Rahman

Abdul Rahman is a citizen of Afghanistan who, though once a Muslim, has converted to Christianity. By all accounts, it is the law of Afghanistan that such a person is guilty of a serious crime, for which the prescribed punishment is death. I have seen no suggestion that his trial has been marred by irregularities, and it has been reported that Rahman himself admits to the facts which constitute his crime. Moreover, unlike the allocation of power within the Government of the United States, Afghan President Hamid Karzai does not possess the power to pardon Rahman. The Associated Press report published in Saturday's Washington Post is a reasonable summary of the situation.

This case has provoked considerable international outrage. And it can hardly be argued that to be put to death for apostasy is a trivial matter. In the West, it has been some time since similar legal proceedings have been undertaken. Edward Wightman is thought to have been the last person burned at the stake for heresy in England, in April of 1612.

But we have recently heard some rather odd arguments in favor of releasing Mr. Rahman, despite his apparent guilt under Afghan law. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice argued on the Sunday talk shows that "Freedom of religion is at the core of democratic development . . . ." And Mark Steyn, by far a better craftsman of rhetoric (more's the pity) than our Department of State, put it this way:

In a more culturally confident age, the British in India were faced with the practice of "suttee" -- the tradition of burning widows on the funeral pyres of their husbands. General Sir Charles Napier was impeccably multicultural:

''You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: When men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows.You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."

But neither argument seems particularly persuasive. Are we to understand that it is the view of the United States that it -- rather than the people of Afghanistan and their elected government -- is the source of sovereignty and legitimacy? That most certainly was the position of Her Majesty's Imperial government with respect to India. Does the United States claim to occupy the same position as the British Raj?

Similarly, while Dr. Rice is certainly correct that "religious freedom" has become a fundamental feature of modern, Western, liberal, nations, it is certainly incorrect to suggest that it is somehow inherent in "democracy." Dr. Rice confuses a consensus with respect to culture and morality with a system for exercising power. And that consensus is by no means universal: Many European nations would insist that capital punishment in any circumstance is barbaric, and might well argue that its banishment is a fundamental feature of liberal democracy. But not so in Texas.

The question is not how we might vote were we citizens of Afghanistan. Nor is the question what bills we might introduce in the legislature of that country had we been elected to it. The question is whether we really believe in the will of the people, or only in our own will.

In Afghanistan a government regularly elected by the people of that nation has adopted laws with which many of us in the West disagree. To interfere with that nation's legal system, because outsiders would prefer things to have been done differently, is to return to the arbitrary government of the strong. One might think Afghanistan has had rather enough of that in the last 20 years.

We must decide whether we will treat the people and the government of that country seriously, as grownups responsible for themselves, or if instead we will demand that they adhere not to our Western political principles regarding the source of sovereignty and legitimacy, but instead to our social and moral views. If we do that, then we might just as well do away with the expensive game of elected government, and substitute a proper imperial occupation, with a proper Viceroy.