{"id":3676,"date":"2006-03-28T01:13:55","date_gmt":"2006-03-28T01:13:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/cold-comfort.html"},"modified":"2006-03-28T01:13:55","modified_gmt":"2006-03-28T01:13:55","slug":"cold-comfort","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/cold-comfort.html","title":{"rendered":"Cold Comfort"},"content":{"rendered":"

Who’s surprised by the Abdul Rahman case?<\/a><\/p>\n

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Thus it was dizzying to hear of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice\u2019s plea to Afghan President Hamid Kharzai that, as Fox News reported<\/a> last week, \u201cshe hope[d] Afghanistan would uphold in its constitution in considering Rahman\u2019s case.\u201d The Orwellian approach was echoed by her spokesman, Sean McCormack, who insisted that \u201cfreedom of worship [and] freedom of expression \u2026 are bedrock principles of democracy \u2026 that are enshrined in the Afghan constitution[.]…\u201d<\/p>\n

A much different reality could not escape any sensible person who actually takes the time to read the Afghan constitution. The State Department is midwife of a document fully reflective of a country that is 98-percent Muslim and in which the Taliban and al Qaeda remain forces to be reckoned with. It is a pervasively Islamic evergreen with a few shiny human-rights ornaments attached \u2014 the latter giving \u201cdemocracy project\u201d obsessives some cover for the inevitability that astonished Americans would one day come-a-callin\u2019 to ask how, in the midst of our war against Muslim extremists, the United States could have abided the installation of Islam and its draconian law as ultimate authority in a country we had given American lives to liberate.<\/p>\n

The ongoing blather about freedom of this and freedom of that is remarkable naivet\u00e9. The Afghan constitution is categorical that Islamic law will apply to any matter in which there is not another directly applicable law. And, by the constitution\u2019s own terms, there can be no contrary laws<\/em> in any event because \u201cno law can be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is precious to listen to Secretary Rice now pine about how bedrock Islamic tenets \u2014 like the well-known death penalty for what, in Muslim countries, is the well-known \u201ccrime\u201d of apostasy \u2014 were somehow balanced by lip-service nods to freedom of religion. Rice \u2014 in monotonous chorus with her top ambassador to the Muslim world, Karen Hughes, and, for that matter, the president himself \u2014 has been telling anyone who would listen that Islam is the \u201creligion of love and peace.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Who’s surprised by the Abdul Rahman case? Thus it was dizzying to hear of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice\u2019s plea to Afghan President Hamid Kharzai that, as Fox News reported last week, \u201cshe hope[d] Afghanistan would uphold in its constitution in considering Rahman\u2019s case.\u201d The Orwellian approach was echoed by her spokesman, Sean McCormack, who…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nCold Comfort - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/cold-comfort.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Cold Comfort - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Who’s surprised by the Abdul Rahman case? Thus it was dizzying to hear of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice\u2019s plea to Afghan President Hamid Kharzai that, as Fox News reported last week, \u201cshe hope[d] Afghanistan would uphold in its constitution in considering Rahman\u2019s case.\u201d The Orwellian approach was echoed by her spokesman, Sean McCormack, who…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/cold-comfort.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-03-28T01:13:55+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Cold Comfort - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/cold-comfort.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Cold Comfort - Via Media","og_description":"Who’s surprised by the Abdul Rahman case? Thus it was dizzying to hear of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice\u2019s plea to Afghan President Hamid Kharzai that, as Fox News reported last week, \u201cshe hope[d] Afghanistan would uphold in its constitution in considering Rahman\u2019s case.\u201d The Orwellian approach was echoed by her spokesman, Sean McCormack, who…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/cold-comfort.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2006-03-28T01:13:55+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/cold-comfort.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/cold-comfort.html","name":"Cold Comfort - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2006-03-28T01:13:55+00:00","dateModified":"2006-03-28T01:13:55+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/cold-comfort.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/cold-comfort.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/cold-comfort.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Cold Comfort"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3676"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3676\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}