Christians live in fear

Source
BY JAMES RUPERT
Newsday Staff Correspondent

July 9, 2006

KABUL, Afghanistan — A few months after U.S. forces helped overthrow the Taliban regime here, a young, educated Afghan eagerly joined the thousands returning from exile to build a new, peaceful, tolerant Afghanistan. The United States had promised its help and pushed a liberal politician, Hamid Karzai, into the presidency.

Feeling liberated by his hopes for Afghanistan’s future, the young man got foolish, he now says. He quietly told a few friends that, during his years of exile in Pakistan, he had found spiritual guidance in the Bible and had converted from Islam to Christianity.

Four years later a closeted Christian community of perhaps 100 people lives here in terror, especially after this spring, when another of its members, named Abdurrahman, was threatened with trial and execution for religious treason. The United States and other governments leaned on Afghan authorities, who instead declared him insane and deported him.

Even that compromise triggered such an uproar here that it will not be repeated, said the young man, who insisted on meeting in secret and asked to be identified only by the Christian name he has taken: John. “If a second [person] among us says publicly that he is a Christian, the government and people will not let him live,” he said.

Afghan liberal intellectuals, notably women, and the Hindu and Sikh religious minorities push quietly these days to broaden Afghan notions of tolerance. But the Afghan Christians, who John said are mostly men, converted by Western missionaries in Pakistan during the 1980s and ’90s, have no choice but to hide.

President Karzai may be a moderate backed by the United States and other foreign governments. But in ousting the Taliban and recreating the Afghan state, Washington has depended heavily on Islamic militant warlords who thus remain in power alongside Karzai. And the political mood of Afghans these days is easily turned to violence against any foreign influence. Especially given the world’s many Muslim-Western conflicts, “ordinary people are very emotional about defending Islam” from any perceived slight, “even with violence,” John said.

Afghan converts to Christianity cannot speak of their beliefs even to loved ones.

“Two or three times I tried to share my faith with my wife, but she will not discuss this,” John said.

Small groups of Christians used to gather secretly to pray, but have stopped even this since the crisis over Abdurrahman.

Now, John fears being identified publicly as a Christian.

“On the street, people will point and say that I am one of them. ” Or, he said, “they ask me, ‘Why don’t we see you at the mosque? ‘”

“One day I went to visit my uncle and he came to his door and asked me why I was there,” John said. “I said ‘I came to see you. ‘ He told me, ‘I have heard something about you. If it is false, you may come inside. If it is true, I don’t want to talk to you. ‘ I told him that I should probably go.”