Afghanistan's president praised his government April 4 for releasing a Christian who had been threatened with death for abandoning Islam.
Hamid Karzai said the nation's judiciary was right not to bow to pressure from Muslim clerics and elected leaders, who had called for 41-year-old Abdul Rahman to be executed because of his conversion more than 14 years ago.
On March 26, Afghanistan's Supreme Court dismissed the government's case against Rahman. Legal officials cited a lack of evidence against him and a belief that he may be mentally unfit to stand trial.
Rahman was freed and went into immediate hiding March 27. He is now in Italy, where officials offered him asylum. Afterward, hundreds of Afghans protested the release, as did the nation's parliament, in a non-binding vote.
Rahman converted to Christianity while working for a Christian aid group in Pakistan in the early 1990s. He was only recently jailed after court leaders learned of his faith in a child-custody battle with his ex-wife.
Since his imprisonment made headlines, groups from multiple faiths, continents and political ideologies have decried the Afghan judicial system for the situation. President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice appealed to Karzai to assure Rahman's safety.
The Afghan Constitution has separate sections protecting religious freedom and establishing Islam as the supreme law of the land. Some observers have warned that the tension between the two provisions would provide too much leeway to conservative Muslim jurists in cases such as Rahman's.
Associated Baptist Press