After 911, I sought out NYC Afghans to interview. A Northern Alliance supporter (our early ally in Afghanistan) guided me to the Muslims in Flushing who supported the Taliban. Not surprisingly, they didn’t want to talk to me. The only quotes that I got from them were: “Go away!”, “We don’t have anything to say!” That made me even more interested in finding out the religious dynamics of Afghan New Yorkers. Religious discussions here are sometimes continued overseas in Afghanistan.
A religious change had to happen before any other changes could sustain themselves in Afghanistan. The United States government put all the emphasis on military training, female empowerment, and secular government, but missed what most Afghan people place as a priority: Islamic faith.
Now, the big story behind the news of the pull-out from Afghanistan is again religion. A local imam explained to a New York Times reporter why their movement kept going against overwhelming odds. “Their losses have changed little on the ground: The Taliban keep replacing their dead and wounded and delivering brutal violence.”
“We see this fight as worship,” Mawlawi Mohammed Qais, the head of the Taliban’s military commission in Laghman Province, said as dozens of his fighters waited nearby on a hillside. “So if a brother is killed, the second brother won’t disappoint God’s wish — he’ll step into the brother’s shoes.” Why should we be surprised that the 1st Symbolism of US democracy is the First Amendment: freedom of religion, press, and assembly. All the other rights flow from this foundation.
Yet, have you noticed that United States leaders and press have not highlighted Afghan Islamic leaders, those with sound theology who endorsed what we were doing in their country? There were some leaders that emerged, but do you know of any news story on one? (I would like to know. I searched through the last six months of religion stories by an affiliate of Associated Press but found no such article, but it was a partial search.}
The Taliban knew dissident imams would be a threat. So, their current overall leader, Mawlawi Haibatullah Akhundzada, put an emphasis on targeting any imam who went against the Taliban’s rigid version of Muslim teaching. The stories that are usually run in American papers have usually been on imams who were killed by the Taliban. So, unfortunately, the American public seldom got to know them except through death notices.
There is a widespread intensification of Islamic faith going on among the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Unfortunately, it is a very intolerant type of Islam. One of the first things that the Taliban did in their current drive was to bomb the leading Shiite mosque in Herat.
Here are some data from a 2019 survey funded by the US, UK, German and Australian governments. It was a massive survey and the fieldwork appears to be very good.
By far, the most trusted leaders in Afghanistan are religious leaders. 71% of Afghans trust religious leaders. Nearly 2/3rds of Afghans say that religious leaders should be consulted before making a political decision. I see no evidence that our media or government followed up on this finding. Where are all the articles on what the Afghan religious leaders think? None or almost none.
Curiously, the survey asked no questions on what religious issues do the Afghans want to be addressed. The survey asked how many years an Afghan went to an Islamic school, but then didn’t ask how those schools could be improved. The question was there probably because the US government basically thinks that the Islamic schools are a breeding ground for terrorism (such a generalization is not true. Some are; some are not.)
The list of social issues polled was just like a run-of-the-mill list in America, leaving out any social issues focused upon by the religious people. No question on abortion, no question on how to strengthen the traditional family, no question on the quality of religious education, no question on how important is religious faith for national leadership (how could they leave out this one?).
Did you know that much of the medical treatment in rural areas is done by imams? The local religious leaders also provide counseling (as “family secret keepers) to people undergoing difficult emotional issues, mediates disputes, and sometimes, repairs watches. The imam is involved in Afghan life from birth to death. With what challenges did they need help? Did they need better medical training, counseling education, and so forth? Imams are thought to not accept bribes. Maybe, we could have asked people about what they thought about religious solutions to the endemic corruption in Afghanistan (one of the biggest issues).
Two other findings are interesting. One, a majority of male and female Afghans do not want a member of parliament to be female. It seems to be assumed by the surveyors that no Afghan wants a female imam, so such a question was a waste of time (or maybe the surveyors really weren’t interested in religious affairs). On the other hand, most Afghans favor education for females, fair employment for females, etc. In other words, many of the Afghan Muslims are a lot like many religious Americans who want equality for females in most areas of life but maybe not female religious leaders. Unfortunately, these moderate conservative views will likely be shoved aside by the Taliban. Wanting perfect feminism turned out to be an enemy of the good that we could achieve.
The survey shows the importance of religion, then forgets about it for most of the survey. This was a prestigious survey supported by the main foreign governments with a presence in Afghanistan. Secularization blinded them. Now, we and the Afghans are paying the price.
Americans need to lament their secularism and hostility to all forms of Islam and other religions.
FYI: Mohammad Osman Tariq, The Asia Foundation’s director of Islam & Development, is quite aware of the importance of religion in Afghanistan and writes eloquently about it. But the main focus of the survey which I am discussing is that it just leaves religion mostly out of the picture. Seems like this is a very secular social science view.
See Afghanistan Flash Surveys in 2020-21
