Abdul Rahman thanks Pope Benedict for safe sanctuary

AP: Thursday March 30, 2006

ROME - An Afghan man who had faced the death penalty in his homeland for converting from Islam to Christianity said Thursday he was certain he would have been killed if he had remained in Kabul and thanked Pope Benedict XVI for intervening on his behalf.

"In Kabul they would have killed me, I'm sure of it." Abdul Rahman, who is under protection after being spirited out ofAfghanistan to a secret location in Italy earlier in the week, told Italian journalists. "If you are not a Muslim in an Islamic country like mine they kill you, there are no doubts."

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Meanwhile, at Frontpagemagazine, Serge Trifkovic, former BBC commentator and US NEWS and World Report reporter, points to the 50 million Christians killed for their faith throughout the world in the past century:

when Christians are routinely mistreated and killed by our other trusted friends and allies of the United States in the region - notably Pakistan, Egypt, and even the "secular" Turkey - you don't hear about it, there are no vigils, no protests, no offers of asylum. In Pakistan, murders, endemic discrimination, and constant harassment of Christians - who are mainly poor and account for a mere one percent of the population - is persistent. Any dispute with a Muslim - most commonly over land - can become a religious issue. Christians are routinely accused of "blasphemy against Islam," an offense that carries the death penalty as Pakistan has some of the strictest blasphemy laws in the Muslim world. Charges of blasphemy can be made on the flimsiest of evidence - even one man's word against another - and since it is invariably a Muslim's word against that of a Christian, the outcome is preordained.