The Time Magazine picture of the disfigured Afghan girl — reportedly the result of an attack by her husband — has justifiably raised the issue of the rights and status of women in Afghanistan.  The logic seems reasonable; if Aisha had not been a woman, it is unlikely she would have been subject to such abuse.  The “women’s rights” cause also fits with the common theme of some Western supporters — including some in America — of the Afghan war effort.

In an interesting contrast, the airwaves have been awash with condemnation of the attack that left 10 Christian aid workers dead in Afghanistan last week.  Karl Eikenberry, US ambassador to Afghanistan, said this is a video statement: 

The Taliban has called this group of medical aid workers spies and proselytizers.  They were no such thing. These were selfless volunteers who devoted themselves to providing free and much-needed health care to Afghans in the most remote and difficult parts of your country.

Their murder demonstrates the absolute disregard that terrorist-inspired Taliban and other insurgents have for your health, have for your security and have for your opportunity.  They don’t care about your future. They only care about themselves and their own ideology.

Like other condemnations, including that by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the statement focuses on the unjustified killing of a group of men and women that was helping meet the physical needs of average Afghans.

The problem is they weren’t killed because they were aid workers.  Like Aisha, who would not have suffered but for her gender, these men and women would reportedly be alive today but for their religion.

It is telling that an attack that disfigures a woman — that would not have happened if she were not a woman — is met by a worldwide call for the protection of equal rights for women, while an attack that kills a group of Christians — that would not have happened were they not Christians — is met by silence on the topic of religious freedom.

Eikenberry had a perfect opportunity to highlight the need for tolerance and religious freedom in Afghanistan, but to do so he would have had to claim that even if they were proselytizing, that was a permissible, even laudable, action consistent with the human right to conscience and religion.  The problem is that under Afghan law, conversion from Islam can be a crime punishable by death.

The Taliban have claimed the aid workers were “spies and proselytizers.”  It is possible, even likely, that it was nothing more than a robbery and attack on Westerners that was couched in the most threatening terms possible for strategic and propaganda effect.

Even so, it is disappointing that the execution of a group of Christians — reportedly due, in part, to their faith — in a country whose government is actively supported by the US military, and whose government is a party to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that explicitly includes both the freedom believe and the freedom to change one’s religion (Article 18), doesn’t even cause “religious freedom” to be mentioned by government officials or the mainstream press.

One might start to think that the freedom to believe according to the dictates of one’s own conscience isn’t the sacred human right that it once was.