BILL TAMMEUS Afghans don't have religious freedom

The global angst over the threatened execution of Abdul Rahman, the Christian convert in Afghanistan, has settled a bit. So let's think about what went wrong.
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has it essentially right: Rahman became the victim of a botched constitution that fails to protect freedom of religion.
The commission noted in a recent letter it sent to President Bush that Afghanistan's failure to create an internally consistent constitution left the door open "for a harsh, unfair or even abusive interpretation of religious orthodoxy to be officially imposed."
The background is this: In response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks -- and at the cost of precious American blood -- America and its allies liberated Afghanistan from the religious thugs known as the Taliban. Those fanatics had allowed Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida terrorist network to use Afghanistan as a training ground.
Once that initial necessary and justified work was done, the task was to move from a Taliban-dominated country to a nation in which religious freedom is respected.
Taliban
After all, it would not be in any country's interest to recreate an Afghanistan that would promote anything like the warped brand of Islam fostered by the Taliban and similar radicals, an Islam that condemns to death Muslims who convert to another religion. Nor, in fact, is it in Islam's interest for such a harsh ideology to be preached in its name.
But that transformation requires careful planning, incredible perseverance, great sensitivity and, at times, starkly realistic words to the emerging religious and political leadership of Afghanistan to make sure they adhere to international law on human rights.
Clearly some progress has been made in Afghanistan. But as long as a man can be brought before the courts there and threatened with death for converting to Christianity, something is horribly wrong, as the religious freedom commission noted in its letter to President Bush. And now Rahman lives in exile in Italy to protect himself.
Many Christian critics of Islam pretend it's a monolithic faith. That's ridiculous. Islam in some ways is as varied as Christianity, which is almost hopelessly divided. That means governments of predominantly Muslim countries can and do vary widely.
Some countries declare themselves to be Islamic states, some simply say Islam is the official religion while others proclaim the state to be secular or say nothing in the constitution about whether the state is Islamic or secular.
Many divisions in Christianity are rooted in how one interprets the Bible. Similarly, many of Islam's divisions can be traced to the interpretative lens through which sacred writing is read.
Those lenses are the Hadith, the several collections of sayings and traditions of the Prophet Muhammad. The Hadith and the Quran are not co-equals. The Quran ranks first. But scholars say the way Muslims express their faith can vary significantly depending on which Hadith one follows and whether one uses the most reliable Hadith, known as "sahih," or the least reliable, called "da'if."
Chain of transmitters
Each Hadith collection consists of the text and the "isnad," or chain of transmitters. It's the list of who said what to whom and on whose authority. Over time, scholars produced many collections of Hadith, though Sunni Islam recognizes what it calls six large collections, with various levels of reliability.
So Islam does not require what Afghanistan has -- a constitution that fails to protect religious freedom and that makes the courts apply a particular Islamic legal system (Hanafi jurisprudence) when the constitution or laws are silent. Article 2 of Afghanistan's constitution says Islam is its religion, but it also says other religions "may be practiced in peace and harmony in the Republic."
In fact, Afghanistan has pledged to abide by international law, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. That pledge is in the constitution, but the document is internally inconsistent. It says "no law can be contrary to ... Islam," which brings us back to how the religion is interpreted.
X Bill Tammeus is a columnist for The Kansas City Star. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.