“So you walk into them and say, ‘This is wrong! Take it away!’ But wrong according to whom?” said Eric Mortensen, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies. “What happens when we encounter a culture whose norms are very different from our own? Can we impose our values on them?” Mortensen said.

He referred to the international political pressure on Kabul last week, where Abdul Rahman, a 41-year-old Christian convert, was to be tried for rejecting Islam, and could have faced death unless he recanted, according to the Shariah law.

“Being a Christian, I am inspired by people who are strong and courageous enough, and convicted within their faith – whatever it may be – to stand for it, even in the face of death,” said Leslie Essien, Initiative on Faith & Practice Outreach Coordinator. “I hope that my faith would grow to that point.”

Rahman, who accepted Christianity while working with an aid group in adjacent Pakistan 16 years ago, was arrested when the police discovered a Bible in his possession after he returned from Europe to seek custody of his two children.

“People assume that because of the changes that have happened in Afghanistan, the religious sentiments in the country will be much more progressive and liberal,” Mortensen commented. “Yet, nothing has happened in the last few years that would make the religion less conservative. The Taliban still has huge influence in the country.”

Rahman’s trial reminded junior Aleksandra Babic of the civil war horrors she went through in her native Bosnia.

“In the circumstances that I come from, people were killed without anyone knowing,” said Babic. “I think it is good that the case has become an international issue and people do know about it.”

For first-year Peter Deng, a Sudanese Christian, the story of Abdul Rahman evoked memories of his homeland.

“When I was 13 years old and lived in Sudan, a Muslim friend of ours came to the church once and was amazed by Christianity,” Deng said. “But he never told anyone because he was afraid that if he converted, he was going to get killed.”

According to Mortensen, in democracy there should be some sense of representation.

Thus, if 95 percent of the people of Afghanistan agreed upon a certain law, they should have every right to have that law.

“If this includes that being an apostate should be punishable by death, that is democracy,” Mortensen said. “That is the law of their land: why shouldn’t we respect it?”

First-year Osama Sabbah, a Palestinian Muslim, said that, according to the Quran, a Muslim could be killed for converting to another religion.

“When a Muslim converts to Christianity, he is not only going against the rules of the Islamic state, but is also undermining the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad,” Sabbah said. “Afghanistan is simply following the precepts of Islam.”

Assistant Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies Shelini Harris, who teaches a class on Islam this semester, noted that the trial in question was based on early Islamic society law, in which religion and the state were the same.

“If somebody departed from Islam and joined a different religion, they became a threat to the state,” Harris said. “It was a very different context: apostasy was similar to treason. The law is still in the books, but is usually not applied in most places.”

To Jane Redmont, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, the case in Afghanistan is mostly a human rights issue.

“According to international human rights agreements, [the Afghani court] doesn’t have the right to sentence Rahman to death,” Redmont said.

The trial violated Article 18 of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, which states that “everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; (and) to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.”

“The case shows there certainly is very limited, if any, religious freedom in Afghanistan,” Redmont said.

According to Sports Information Director Dave Walters, who leads student-athlete Bible study this year, holding a different religion cannot be worthy of death.

“Nothing in the Scriptures supports killing a person for holding a different belief,” Walters said. “[Abdul Rahman] wasn’t arrested for making a scene, for proselytizing, or for disrupting the culture. He was arrested for his belief.”

According to Walters, the trial called for humanity’s need to have “a standard of truth.”

“A standard of truth is a basis by which people accept certain principles as truth – basically what is right and what is good,” Walters said. “And based on those principles, laws are established for the common good of society.”

“Now the question is: what is that baseline?” Walters said. “For me, it’s the Bible; for the Muslims in Afghanistan, it is probably the Quran, so it varies. And as long as there is variance in standards of truth, there is going to be conflict.”

According to Walters, in order to seek the truth, people need to have the freedom to “discuss civilly different points of view, different opinions, different thoughts.”

“Through this conversation, hopefully the truth will be revealed,” Walters said. “And there is more to truth than just theory and words; there is the action that goes with it. So if you examine someone’s truth claims and their actions are inconsistent, that is really going to hurt that person’s cause.”

To the delight of Walters and Rahman’s other advocates, the court in Kabul dismissed the trial on March. 26 after President

of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai’s intervention.

A few days later, Italy granted Rahman asylum to prevent the likely public lynching upon his release.

“Standing for what we believe is very important,” Essien said. “And if what we believe isn’t worth dying for, maybe we need to rethink our beliefs and our values.