Religious tolerance? Afghanistan's constitution simultaneously embraces religious liberty and sharia, or Islamic law, under which those who turn away from Islam can be sentenced to death. Even moderate Muslim clerics, as well as members of Rahman's own family, have said that death is the only fair and logical punishment for the medical-aid worker under Afghanistan's religiously based legal system. How wonderful that Christians these days worry about religious freedom. It really is. For they didn't always give many discarded buttons' worth about the individual's choice of religious outlook. But let us hope it stays this way, that Christianity stays secularized and tolerant, for it is not given that it will. For when the catholic church makes Mother Theresa a saint, the pope redeems the crusades and North Dakota reinstates the religious law against abortion, we may only be seeing the beginning of a bad reversal, when Christians will be no more "moderate" than the above mentioned Afghan muslims. It's at times like this that I wish more strongly than usual that all the world was secular - atheists! But then again, even that kind of law has been tried ...