Damned If You Don’t

Recently I set forth what I thought was a leading-edge new legal theory, namely that everything which introduces discomfort, whether physical or psychological, to me, Dr. Wes Browning, should be, and in fact already is, illegal.

Now I feel hopelessly outclassed by Afghanistan clerics calling for the death penalty for Abdul Rahman, the fellow who allegedly converted to Christianity from Islam 16 years ago. The clerics’ theory goes way beyond anything I had thought to propose. They don’t just want to execute those who are openly apostate, people who thereby directly visit psychological discomfort upon the clerics. They also want to execute those who are “outed” as having been closet apostates, for, if I’ve got my English tense straight, having potentially have might had brought psychological discomfort upon them.

Let me try that again. The man had been apostate in secret for 16 years, and then was exposed by in-laws. From my silly Western point of view, I would have thought that the in-laws were the ones who would be charged with causing the discomfort, but that just goes to show how dismally non-multiculturalized I am.

No, the real affront was Abdul Rahman’s hidden affront to the very fabric of space and time for secretly switching religions in mid-life and then enabling in-laws to find out about it and tell people. Why, someone could have been hurt all this time.

“Quick,” they seem to be saying, “someone hang Abdul right now because at any time in the last 16 years he might have ridden into Jerusalem or Kabul or Mazar-e-Sharif on a donkey, started sermonizing, and forced us to have previously gotten New Testamenty on his wrists and ankles.”

I’m sure the parallel to the Zacarias Moussaoui case has by now struck some of you. Moussaoui, of course, is being tried for the opposite, for not having done what he might have done, namely to have admitted to not taken part in 9-11, prior to its happening, in order that it could not have happened. I mean, when he was jailed before 9-11, he was supposed to have told the FBI, before 9-11 happened, that it would happen. Not the day, the event. So that it wouldn’t have happened.

It makes perfect sense to me, and I want to see these principles extended further. We need to prosecute more people for what they might potentially have done. I believe that is in fact the original meaning of the Latin “pro secute” – secute them before they secute you.

Hey, secute them even if they never secute you, but could have, if you had let them, or if they weren’t too afraid of you to.

Now the prosecutor in Afghanistan is spoiling the whole thing by trying to let Abdul off for having converted while not in his right mind. I was hoping that at the very least the clerics would offer to bless Abdul’s soul and commit it to Heaven just before beheading him, provided that he recanted his conversion and denounced Satan and Christianity. But I guess I can’t expect the Spanish Inquisition.

Still, as of this writing, the situation is salvageable. There are reports of “hundreds” of Muslim protestors in Afghanistan protesting the possible impending release of Mr. Rahman, on the grounds that to release him would make Islam look bad. Maybe they could hang the prosecutor for having had possibly released him last week, when he didn’t. In so doing they might save Islam at the last minute from the international disgrace of having shown tolerance.

Or, they could not hang the prosecutor, and say that they might have, and give themselves points for having potentially done it. Then 16 years from now, they could do it anyway, and say they’d done it all along, “in their hearts,” where it counts.

Maybe the protestors are trying to do Christianity a favor. After all, there probably wouldn’t be a Christianity today if Pontius Pilate had granted an insanity plea.