The Way It Is: Afghanistan’s sharia problem — and ours.

This is an interesting article on Islam and the ramifictions of Sharia law. There is no way of getting around it, if a country is ruled by Sharia law a person who denounces Islam and converts to another religion faces the death penalty. This is the way it is, Islam as a religion is not well known for its tolerance. BTW homosexualtiy and adultery are also capital offenses. Kind of puts things in perspective for those in the west that advocate tolerance.

Andrew McCarthy writes,

"Obviously, I agree with the editorial elsewhere on National Review Online today that calls the prosecution of Abdul Rahman in Afghanistan is an “affront to civilization.” I’m constrained to note, however, that if we are willing to live in a world where policy is premised on polite fictions (purporting to give you the out not to deal with hard realities) and expressed in airy ambiguities (relieving you of the obligation to speak clearly and candidly), we will be hard-pressed to be taken seriously when we suddenly call “Time-out!” for a moment of moral clarity.

The editors say the Afghan constitution “stipulates that other religions are free to perform their ceremonies ‘within the limits of the law’ (whatever that means).” To the extent the whatever that means parenthetical endeavors to sow ambiguity into the constitution here, it fails. There is no ambiguity.

Islam is the state religion of Afghanistan. The sharia presumptively governs whenever there is not an explicit law directly on point. There is no other law regarding apostasy, and in sharia regimes, apostasy from Islam is a capital offense. End of story.

Read the whole thing.