WASHINGTON — The Bush administration stepped up pressure Thursday on Afghanistan's government to free a man who could be sentenced to death for converting from Islam to Christianity, a case that is further heightening tensions between the West and the Islamic world.
A day after President Bush expressed his concern, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called Afghan President Hamid Karzai and urged him "in the strongest terms" not to punish Abdur Rahman, a 41-year-old medical aid worker. Rahman faces trial in an Islamic court after it was disclosed in a civil child custody case with his wife that he had converted to Christianity 16 years ago.
Sharia, or Islamic law, considers converts to be apostates, and calls for the death penalty unless they convert back to Islam.
The case, disclosed Sunday by an Afghan judge, has unleashed an international furor with strong religious overtones and caused turmoil across the political spectrum in the United States, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
The controversy puts enormous pressure on Karzai, whose weak government is heavily dependent on the U.S. and Europe for financial aid and military protection from Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters. But he also must contend with conservative clerics at home who frown on too much government cooperation with the West.
Bush, meanwhile, must deal with outrage even among one of the foundations of his political base -- conservative Christians -- while continuing to nurture the Karzai government, created as a result of the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.
These conservatives have questioned the administration's support for democratic governments in Islamic countries and deluged the White House with e-mails.
"How can we congratulate ourselves for liberating Afghanistan from the rule of jihadists only to be ruled by radical Islamists who kill Christians?" wrote Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, a lobbying group, in a letter this week to Bush and congressional leaders.
Leaders of European and other nations, Christian churches and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, whose forces are protecting Afghanistan, have all been in touch with the Afghans to urge that the principle of religious tolerance be observed. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said at a news conference that Karzai had assured him in a telephone conversation that "we don't have to worry" about Rahman's fate.
