Clash of Cultures

We've seen in the last few days a lot of concern over Abdul Rahman, and Afghan Christian threatened with death for daring to leave Islam. There is now a genuine clash of cultures between those who tolerate various religions (or lack thereof), and those who believe there is only one religion and are willing to kill anyone who disagrees with them. The U.S. finds itself in a tenuous position between those two cultures.

Mark Steyn, in his inimitable style, reminds us of a another place and time when a culture which valued life, and one which...well, not so much, came into conflict and how that conflict was resolved.

I can understand why the president and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would rather deal with this through back channels, private assurances from their Afghan counterparts, etc. But the public rhetoric is critical, too. At some point we have to face down a culture in which not only the mob in the street but the highest judges and academics talk like crazies. Abdul Rahman embodies the question at the heart of this struggle: If Islam is a religion one can only convert to, not from, then in the long run it is a threat to every free person on the planet.
What can we do? Should governments with troops in Afghanistan pass joint emergency legislation conferring their citizenship on this poor man and declaring him, as much as Karzai, under their protection?

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. Gen. 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."

This approach wouldn't work in Afghanistan given that there is nothing, short of threatening to make them wear women's underwear on their head (ala Grab Abu prison) that might in any way deter the most radical of the Imams. Maybe threaten them with a football game using a genuine pigskin ball. There must be something that would get their attention.