Fundamentalist Islam: Afghanistan and the Taliban

There is no doubt that the establishment of an Islamic republic in Iran served as an inspiration to other Islamist movements. However, the revolutionary circumstances and the fact that Shi’ism was the dominant Islamic discourse were specific to Iran.

Islamist movements were neither able to emulate them nor did the majority have the desire to do so. Instead, each searched for its own specific way and each set its own boundaries for compromise. As a result some found accommodation within secular states such as Jordan, Lebanon or Egypt; others agreed to formulas whereby parts of otherwise secular states would come under shari’a law, such as the northern states in Nigeria, Mindanao in the Philippines or Aceh in Indonesia. Yet others succeeded in establishing Islamic states through conflict and civil war, for example Sudan and Afghanistan. These, however, differed significantly from the Iranian model.

In order to illustrate just how different the interpretation and implementation of shari’a law can be and how each Islamic state has been shaped by specific historic and cultural circumstances, it is useful to look at Afghanistan under the Taliban. After the 1989 withdrawal of Soviet forces, which was claimed as a victory by the Afghan resistance or the mujahedeen, Afghanistan turned in upon itself and in 1992, following the fall of the communist regime in Kabul, disintegrated into a full-blown civil war along tribal, as well as Islamist, lines. In 1994, a new political force emerged from the turmoil, the Taliban, which has been described as the ultimate product of person-centred, tribal Pashtun political culture. At the core of this new movement were Afghan men who since the Soviet invasion had found refuge in neighbouring Pakistan where many of them studied in Islamic seminaries or madrasas. Some also received military training from Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) which built them up in an effort to control Afghanistan.

To the ISI the Taliban not only represented the largest ethnic group, the Pashtun, but also seemed to be one of the more moderate groups. The latter changed around 1995 when in an internal struggle extreme Islamists ousted the traditionalists. Moreover, Pakistan saw the Taliban as a natural support base for radical Muslim groups in Kashmir, and Afghanistan as providing strategic depth in Pakistan’s conflict with India. The other key supporter of the Taliban was Saudi Arabia which saw them as an ally in spreading puritanical Islam, as well as a Central Asian foothold in their hegemonic struggle with Shi’a Iran.

Taliban (Arabic: students)

Term used to refer to the fundamentalist Muslim militia of Pashtun Afghans and Pakistanis that overthrew the Afghan ethnic coalition government of Ahmad Shah Masood in 1998.

mujahedeen (Arabic: those who struggle in the way of God)

Term used for the Muslim guerrillas who fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan in 1979-89.

When the Taliban rose to power in 1994, they were initially welcomed by the people as a new leadership that was more honest but above all could deliver stability. In 1996 the Taliban took Kabul and by 1998 their position in power had been consolidated to such an extent that they went on the offensive against the Tajik Northern Alliance, leaving them in control of two-thirds of the country. However, by the time they collapsed under the pressure of the post-11 September 2001 US-led bombing campaign, the popular mood had shifted. While the Taliban had brought some of the sought-after stability, their initial appeal as more moral leaders was undermined by their involvement in the drug trade and their harsh treatment of the civilian population.

Under the leadership of Mullah Mohammed Omar, who had proclaimed himself Caliph, the Taliban advocated a strict, ultra-conservative form of Sunni Islam and an Islamist ideology that was anti-modern, anti-Shi’a, anti-Western, anti-women and anti-democratic.

This was also reflected in their interpretation of jihad as the physical struggle against heretics ranging from ‘Western crusaders’ to fellow Muslims whose interpretation of Islam differed. The ‘heretics’ most immediately affected were the Shi’a who were persecuted and the non-Muslim minorities, the Hindus, Sikhs and Jews, who until 1992 had played a significant role in the country’s economy.

Sunni Islam

The main body of Muslims, who follow the path (sunna) of the Prophet Mohammed and the Quran and the hadith.

The Taliban saw themselves as the bearers of true Islamic justice, including the enforcement of the harshest principles of shari’a such as the amputation of limbs for thieves, the stoning to death of adulterers, the total segregation of women and the public execution of murderers by the victim’s relatives. This latter practice, however, was repeatedly condemned by non-Afghan Sunni clerics as being merely the enforcement of the Pashtun tribal code of behaviour cloaked in Islamic language. The Taliban also rejected the concept of doubt except as sin and considered debate as a form of heresy.

hadith

The traditions collected by witnesses to the Prophet Muhammad’s life at Medina.

An estimated 7,000 were handed down through oral traditions, collected, edited and recorded by Bukhari (d. 807) and Muslim (d. 875).

The literal interpretation of the Quran, hadith and shari’a placed the Taliban firmly in the fundamentalist category. This was further reflected in the destruction of all forms of art depicting the human form, ranging from photography to paintings and, most infamously, the dynamiting of two 1,800-year-old giant Buddha statues in Bamyian in February 2001. Fundamentalism also lay at the heart of their banning all forms of entertainment including sports and games; football stadiums were instead transformed into public execution grounds.

The model of Islamic state in Afghanistan under the Taliban could not be more different from that prevailing in Iran.

While Iran enforced Muslim dress and standards of morality, Iranian women continued to carry out their professions, to vote and stand in elections, to drive cars and to own property. Women in Afghanistan under the Taliban were given no such rights. Veiled from head to toe, they had to give up their jobs, were deprived of all education beyond primary school, and were confined to their homes in the belief that their mere presence in public provoked immorality. Similarly, while Iran and the Taliban were equally suspicious of Western values and culture, Iran embraced modern technology to spread its revolution and to raise the living standards of the population, while the Taliban rejected modernity altogether, resulting in a ban on television, cinemas and music, as well as the decline of the country into starvation. These differences reveal the extent to which each interpretation of what constitutes an Islamic state is the product of a very specific environment and historical circumstances. It can be interpreted as compatible with democracy or as its total antithesis. It can embrace progress or stand in complete opposition to it.

Hamas

The acronym for Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya (Islamic Resistance Movement). Emerged during the first intifada in 1987 in the Gaza Strip.

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Source: Best Antony. International History of the Twentieth Century and Beyond. Routledge,2008. — 638 p.. 2008

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