A religion to kill for?

Nothing proves the moral and strategic bankruptcy of the Afghan insurgency like the murder of 10 medical aid workers last week in a remote part of Afghanistan. The Taliban bragged that its soldiers had killed the aid workers, whom the Taliban described as spies and proselytizers. The group of seven American medical professionals, one Briton and two Afghan interpreters had a long history of providing aid and relief to the neediest in Afghanistan. One leader of the medical team, Tom Little, an optometrist, had been providing free medical care to Afghans for more than 30 years, through all the turmoil of the Soviet invasion and subsequent civil war.

The entire medical team was executed by gunmen who captured them after they had spent weeks providing desperately needed care in a tiny, remote village. One can only explain these murders as the acts of paranoid people who distrust and hate everyone unlike themselves, no matter how kind, helpful and loving the strangers might be. The many kindnesses and sacrifices of these strangers were rewarded with bullets, unquestioning and undistinguishing. It's little wonder that Americans are questioning the wisdom of a war amid a population so filled with irrational hatred.

Even if, as the Taliban claimed, the medical missionaries were preaching Christianity — a claim firmly denied by all associated with the mission and by friends and relatives of the victims — what does that say about the state of Islam? If Islam cannot survive a test of allegiances when alternative faiths are explained and can only be maintained by the threat of execution for apostates, what real chance does it have? The murderous Taliban, claiming to be defenders of Islam, are actually proclaiming the weakness of their faith. A religion that cannot be contested, doubted or questioned cannot survive in a modern world of ideas and intellectual rigor.