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A.C.N - Aid to the Church in Need Italian Office |
Religious Freedom in
the Majority Islamic Countries |
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Afghanistan Population:
21,138,000 The tiny minority of Christians in the country is made up above all of foreigners. There are no functioning Church structures. Islam is the state religion and no other form of proselytism is permitted. Afghanistan was a monarchy up to 1973 and then adopted a republican type political order. In 1977 a new constitution was promulgated turning it into a one-party state, with Islam as the state religion. In 1978, with the Soviet invasion, a socialist, communist puppet regime was installed with support from the Soviet Union. In 1989 the Muslims succeeded in seizing power once again and with the withdrawal of the Soviet troops a civil war began among the Muslims themselves, who were divided between Shiite fundamentalists and moderates. The former have so far had, and continue to have, the best of it, through the action of the Taliban, while the moderates have set up a government in exile under the leadership of Ahmad Shah Massud in the regions beyond the Panshir valley and in the north in the Tahar and Badakshan regions. In these areas some social rights have been preserved, such as schools for girls. The Hazara Shiites, who are allied to Massud and led by Haji Mohaqiq, in fact have 10 women who are part of the party’s central committee. The Taliban, Islamist religious students led by the mullah Omar and supported by Pakistan, partly for economic motives, are in control of the remaining two thirds of Afghanistan and continue to issue warnings against Western corruption, despite the fact that they receive economic support from the United States via Unocal. One of their many prohibitions relates to television. All the inhabitants have been invited by the authorities to get rid of their television sets because they are seen as instruments of corruption; likewise all the international centres for female education and the private schools have been closed and some women have been compelled to dress in the full version of the black veil (the "burka") and the men to grow their beards to a length not exceeding 10 centimetres. According to the prevailing laws in Afghanistan women should normally remain enclosed in their houses once they have grown past their childhood years, or eight years of age, unless they are accompanied by a male relative. According to a report by Amnesty International in 1998, hundreds of our women have been shut up and beaten for failing to observe the rules imposed by the Taliban. Many of the schools which taught them to sew and weave carpets, partly also with a view to providing an income and reviving the country's economy, devastated by 20 years of war, are also now closed. Even for hospital emergencies and travel on public transport steps have been taken to segregate the sexes. The Italian daily La Repubblica revealed in an interview with the spokesman for the International Islamic Front for Europe, Omar Bakri, that Italians who have converted to Islam are now being trained in Afghan camps. He asserts that they are "fulfilling a sacred duty imposed by Allah on all young males in good health. The Koran lays down that the Muslim must be capable of bearing arms and should be ready for the Jihad". The training is directed towards combating "foreign armies which occupy a Muslim land". Afghanistan is also one of the world’s largest producers of opium. The Italian journalist, Ettore Mo, writing in the Corriere della Sera of November 23 1998, refers to a conversation he had with a member of the Taliban called Khaled, who declared: "Who cares if heroin is wreaking havoc in the West? It doesn’t matter; they aren’t Muslims". Taking refuge in the country, among other things is Sheikh Osama Ben Laden, accused by the United States of promoting international Islamic terrorism and held responsible by them for the bomb attacks on the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998. A number of press reports, among them that by Fausto Biloslavo in the Italian daily Il Giornale, speak of the climate of terror that reigns in the country, especially for the ethnic minorities of the Hazara and the Tajiks, enemies of the Taliban who belong for the most part to the Pashtun of southern Afghanistan. According to the Amnesty International report of 1998, around 2,000 men from these two groups were taken from their homes in mid-July and imprisoned. And for the population in general there is likewise a regime of social control which even intrudes into the private home, with checks on the frequency of prayer. In addition the use of the Persian language has been banned, since it comes from Iran, an enemy of the present Afghan regime. In November 1998 the Italian daily Avvenire, quoting the radio broadcasts of the Taliban’s own Radio Shari’at, describes a vast operation, conducted using brutal methods, by the religious police to suppress violations of the Islamic laws they have imposed on the country. These attacks were aimed in particular at the town of Pule-Kumri, where the Ishmaelite Muslim minority is numerous. A group once administered by an American of Afghan origin, Sayed Jaffer, who having fought to resist the Soviet invasion, joined the opposition forces at the moment of the seizure of power by the Taliban. |
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