Abdul Rahman's Family Values

[AnnInLa]

Abdul Rahman's Family Values
An official police report on the Christian convert in Afghanistan alleges a tawdry domestic life.

By RACHEL MORARJEE/KABUL



* Analysis: Freed But Not Free

Posted Wednesday, Mar. 29, 2006

Western leaders breathed a sigh of relief yesterday at the release of Abdul Rahman, a Christian convert who had faced the death penalty under Afghanistan's Islamic law for renouncing his Muslim faith. Rahman, 40, has become the poster boy for the Christian right and for religious freedom. Closer up, however, the picture painted by the local police who arrested him shows a candidate not quite ready for family values. Rather, a portrait emerges of a deadbeat dad with psychological problems who couldn't hold down a job, abused his daughters and parents and didn't pay child support.

Colonel Mohammed Saber Monseffi, the chief crime officer at the 15th district police station in Kabul, brought Abdul Rahman in for questioning after a domestic dispute turned violent late last month. Says Monseffi, "He told me, 'I'm a Christian,' and I said that is not of any interest to me. I asked him why did you beat your father, why did you beat your daughters?" The fact that Rahman was Christian was secondary to his family's desire to get him out of the house, said Monseffi, who adds that his own wife is a Russian Christian.

Witness statements by his teenage daughters Mariam and Maria, aged 13 and 14, on the night of his arrest appear to detail his failures as a parent. "He behaves badly with us and we were threatened and disgraced by him. He has no job and has never given me a stitch of clothing or a crust of bread. Just his name as a father," said his 13-year-old daughter Mariam in a statement signed with her inky fingerprint.

Both his daughters mentioned that he had converted to Christianity and abandoned the religion of Islam but also described him as "jobless, lazy and cruel." His 14-year-old daughter Maria said that when her father returned to Afghanistan three years ago after spending many years in Germany and Pakistan he was a stranger to her. "He said he was my father but he hasn't behaved like a father since he came back to Afghanistan. He threatens us and we are all afraid of him and he doesn't believe in the religion of Islam," her statement said.

more at

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1178054,00.html

[MADem]

1. Ha! Sounds like a Bush Pioneer!! n/t

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

2. Now that he's been granted asylum in Italy,

it will be interesting to find out if he obtains a job and sends monetary support back to his family. I assumed from the statement of one of his daughters that when he lived in Germany he didn't.

[pocket]

3. he's a scumbag

big suprise.

[Boojatta]

4. Is the court still looking for his Weapons of Christ Mass? e.o.m.

[atreides1]

5. SOP

Standard Operating Procedure.

So he wasn't arrested for being a "Christian", he was arrested for being an abusive father. But I guess people like Tony Perkins can always look beyond little problems like that, as long as he was a Christian who was being persecuted!!!!

[megatherium]

6. We heard derogatory things about Matthew Sheppard

after his murder; these stories were propagated by people sympathetic to his killers to deflect the charge the murder was bias-related.

In the present case, regardless as to whether Rahman is "jobless, lazy and cruel," the fact remains that the Afghan judiciary was prepared to issue a death sentence for apostasy from Islam. It is difficult to diminish this unpleasant fact. It may be that the allegations against the character of this man are anti-Christian prejudice; they're trying to establish the notion that his Christianity is just another manifestation of his anti-social tendencies.

[theoldman]

7. I guess he is the Italian governments problem now.

Maybe he will end up in jail if he does not change his ways. It is also time for him to repent.