Preserving the Faith — Afghanistan Reflections

All Afghans are Muslims. Well…most Afghans, I know a few who in private deny any faith at all. We do have a small Sikh community of long ago Indian origin in Kabul and one sole surviving Jewish Rabi (after his brother died a few years ago) who is the care taker of the last remaining functioning synagogue in the country dating from a time when Afghanistan actually had a vibrant, but tiny, Jewish community spread across a few major cities.

History can be viewed through a lot of interesting lenses, i.e. political, economic, military, social, etc. But Afghanistan’s history, in particular its interaction with the outside world, can never be understood without viewing it through the eyes of its religious leaders who sought to preserve the Faith from what they perceived as an assault of alien, non-Muslim values, laws, and political systems.

The 19th and early 20th century saw an onslaught of European occupation and rule over the Muslim world in general starting with Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798 and ending with the French and British occupation of what is today Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq after the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire after the first World War. By 1920, most of the Muslim world was ruled by Christian European countries from Morocco to Egypt and further south into Africa including Nigeria, Sudan and Somalia, and across the Middle East, Central Asia, British India and further East into Malaysia and Indonesia. It’s estimated that nearly 90% of the world’s Muslims were living under alien rule by European Governments.

Afghanistan avoided foreign occupation in the 19th century as “The Great Game” left it a diplomatically declared buffer state between British India to the South and Imperial Russia to the North. It was, however, invaded twice by British armies from India in 1839 and 1878. Aside from the usual Machiavellian power plays between the British and a variety of Afghan royal princes vying for the throne in Kabul, it was the religious leaders call for “Jihad” against an alien, non-Muslim invader in order to preserve “The Faith” that ultimately rallied the Afghan population to prevent permanent occupation. It was these “Mad Mullahs” as the Brits called them that saved Afghanistan from occupation by “kaffirs” (unbelievers.)

While alien armies could be kept at bay, ideas were harder to stop at the borders. As the 20th century began, some of the gadgets (and the ideas that spawned them) from Europe including the telegraph, newspapers, modern weapons, talk of a constitution and a parliament, etc. trickled into Afghanistan, or at least into Kabul. It was the Afghan King Amanullah who imported these things full throttle. He drafted Afghanistan’s first constitution, tried to implement girls education, abolish the purdah (full veil for women in public), and declared that all government employees must wear western style pants, hats, and suits. His fatal confusion of “westernization” with “modernization” provoked the religious leaders who declared the King a kaffir and preached “Jihad” against him. He was deposed in 1929 in order to preserve the Faith from assault by alien ideas and adulteration.

If we fast forward to 1978 and the internal communist revolution and the Soviet occupation that followed, we see the same attempt to introduce radical change into Afghan culture and society undergirded by the “scientific atheism” of communism. The reforms included land redistribution, abolition of the "bride price", co-education for men and women, etc. It didn’t take. The reforms immediately provoked an armed resistance lasting ten years and supported by the call to Jihad from religious leaders of all stripes in order to preserve the Faith, among other motivations.

Since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, Afghanistan has once again been subject to reform imposed from the outside world designed to "help"...

“…Afghanistan become a more responsible and integrated member of the region and the world. Afghanistan has made significant progress towards rebuilding its political system and institutions. Political participation – especially among women – is growing. Since 2001, Afghanistan has adopted a new constitution; organized presidential, parliamentary, and provincial council elections; established Ministries to deliver services to the Afghan people; and, developed a vibrant media and committed civil society.”

It all sounds (and looks) unassuming, non-ideological, and certainly religiously neutral, but it’s not. At least as perceived by Afghanistan’s religious leaders who have been largely ignored and left out of this intense development project over the last 15 years. For many of them, this is the latest secular assault on the culture and the Faith; and for the western nations implementing these latest development schemes it is simply the inevitable process of dragging Afghanistan into the banality of a globalized and secular world that ignores the Faith that defines Afghanistan.

Afghanistan is on the fault line in the struggle between Faith and aggressive secularism. The western backed reforms attempted in Afghanistan over the last 15 years have provoked resistance, some of it actively violent as promoted by the Mullahs of the Taliban, and other forms of resistance that are more subtle. It remains be seen how this latest encounter will ultimately unfold, but the guardians of the Faith in Afghanistan cannot, and should not, be ignored in the change process.