AFGHANISTAN. CLERICS URGE EXECUTION OF CONVERT

senior Muslim clerics demanded that Abdul Rahman, an Afghan man on trial for converting from Islam to Christianity, be executed, warning that if the government caved in to Western pressure and freed him, they would incite people to "pull him into pieces."
"Rejecting Islam is insulting God. We will not allow God to be humiliated. This man must die," said cleric Abdul Raoulf, who was considered a moderate and was jailed three times for opposing the Taliban before the hard-line regime was ousted in 2001.
Raoulf, a member of the country's main Islamic organization, the Afghan Ulama Council, agreed. "The government is playing games. The people will not be fooled."
"Cut off his head!" he exclaimed, sitting in a courtyard outside Herati Mosque. "We will call on the people to pull him into pieces so there's nothing left."
Said Mirhossain Nasri, the top cleric at Hossainia Mosque, one of the largest Shiite places of worship in Kabul, said Rahman must be barred from leaving the country.
"If he is allowed to live in the West, then others will claim to be Christian so they can, too," he said. "We must set an example.... He must be hanged."