Afghanistan and Taliban

[Machine_Washable]

Hello Phatmass. I'm sure everyone has seen the news that the Taliban has retaken Afghanistan. So I thought I would provide some history on where the Taliban come from. As I have stated before I am not a scholar. So anything I say should be understood to be from a layman.

Madhabs

Sunni Islam is divided into four schools of thought. These are called madhabs. They consist of Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i and Hanbali. A madhab is a legal framework by which a scholar derives opinions (how much is analogy allowed, what weight is given to custom etc). Technically lay Muslims do not have madhabs. But colloquially we will refer to ourselves as Hanafi or Shafi'i etc because a community and masjid will typically be predominately made up of adherents of a particular madhab. The madhabs are pretty similar and most of the differences are about matters such as where one holds ones hands when praying or other technical issues that a non Muslim probably would not notice. Generally speaking if you know where someone's family is from you know what madhab they belong to. Because historically a ruler would adopt a particular madhab (although all four schools recognize each other as legitimate). So since the Ottomans were Hanafi Turkish and Balkan Muslims are typically Hanafi. North Africans are typically Malaki. Saudis are typically Hanbali. The list goes on.

Creed

All Sunni Muslims believe in Allah (SWT) and that Muhammad (SAW) is the final messenger of Allah. There are six articles of faith that every Sunni Muslim believes.

-There is no God but Allah (SWT) and He is one.
-Angels exist
-Belief in the scriptures sent down by Allah.
-Belief in the Prophets and that Muhammad (SAW) is the final prophet of Allah (SWT)
-Belief in the last day
-Belief in qadar

Within these boundaries there are three mainstream schools of Islam. Historically the most predominate school are the Ashari. There are also the Maturidi and the Athari. The Ashari and the Maturidi are very similar and their students of knowledge will sometimes learn from each other's tectbooks. My family is not Ashari or Maturidi so I really don't know a lot about the technical differences between the schools. The Ashari and Maturidi schools generally accept the use of philosophy in understanding and interpreting theology and kalam. They also believe that faith is dichotomous. You have it or don't have it. In the current day and age they are also generally much more friendly to tasawwuf, also known as Sufism.

The Athari are smaller school. They typically believe that faith increases or decreases with deeds and performance of rites like the five daily prayers. Athari typically believe that a Muslim who abandons the five daily prayers is an unbeliever (although what counts as abandoning the prayers is a matter of dispute).

Historically the big difference between the Athari and the Ashari/Maturidi comes in interpreting Allah's attributes. When we are told that Allah loves us what does this mean? The Ashari/Maturidi typically say that Allah does not literally love us because this is encompassing Allah's grandeur within human understanding. They say that what is meant is that Allah extends His mercy to us or something else. The Athari say "no, Allah (SWT) loves us". Similarly the Hadith ascribe motion to Allah. What do we make of this? The Ashari borrowed from Greek philosophy and said that since motion is an accidental property this cannot be ascribed literally to Allah. So they interpret it non literally. The Athari say that when a seemingly anthropomorphic quality is ascribed to Allah we affirm that modality without asking how. As you have probably gathered from this the Athari are typically much more skeptical of human reason. Athari are also typically hostile to Sufism, resist calling out to the dead, and emphasize the humanness of the Prophet Muhammad (SAW). 

Salafism and 19th Century Movements

So then, where do the Taliban fall into this? Well, I have to spend just another moment on history. We have four schools of thought and we have three creeds that encompass Sunni Islam. In the 19th century the Muslim world began to fall to the West. The Ottoman Empire was weakening daily and India has essentially run by the British East India Company. Not only that but there was a lot of rigidity and ossification in the madhabs. Various reform movements popped up. The most notable being the Salafi. The Salafi claimed to reject rigid adherence to a madhab and to instead look back to the Qur'an and the Sunnah (the sayings and deeds of Prophet Muhammad (SAW)). The movement popped up in a number of places. Among them Saudi Arabia and spearheaded by ibn Wahhab. He was a Hanbali jurist who subscribed to an extremely radical version of the Athari creed. His brother was also a Hanbali scholar and wrote a treatise denouncing him (as did many Hanabali scholars at the time). The Saudi government has spent a lot of money whitewashing ibn Wahhab's legacy but the truth is that he believed that anybody who didn't subscribed entirely to his extremely radical Athari thought was an unbeliever. And not only that, anybody who did not agree with him that these other Muslims were unbelievers was, themselves, an unbeliever.

My family is mostly Athari/salafi sympathetic. We do not believe in going to Sufi shrines or asking saints to petition Allah for us. I believe asking saints to intervene for you is forbidden. But I don't believe the people who do it are unbelievers. So in ibn Wahhab's paradigm that makes me an unbeliever. Ibn Wahhab waged relentless war on the Muslim world and the Ottoman empire. He eventually surrounded and starved the city of Mecca until the scholars of Mecca (some of the greatest scholars of the Muslim world) agreed to sign a statement affirming that they had been unbelievers and he was right to wage war on them. They did this because he was starving the entire civilian population. It is shameful. Were it not for our world running on petrol ibn Wahhab would have been an obscure figure. He was denounced by the great Hanabli and Athari scholars of his day. To say nothing of the Asharis. But he formed an alliance with the Saudi family. Oil was discovered in Saudi Arabia and ibn Wahhab's ideology (called the najdi dawah) was pushed by oil wealth.

Saudi Arabia (and specifically the University of Madinah) because a major hub of Salafi thought. There is a huge spectrum of Salafi scholars. Most Salafi influenced scholars are moderate and don't reject the madhabs. They just believe it's important not to blindly follow your madhab. Great Saudi scholars of the Salafi movement turned down the temperature of the najdi dawah movement because they where out of control. The took the good things of Salafism and pushed back and moderated the extremes. But groups like ISIS and Al Quaeda look to and are inspired by ibn Wahhab and the first wave najdi dawah movement.

The Taliban are actually different (somewhat) from groups like ISIS and Al Quaeda. The ISI (Pakistan's CIA) and Saudi Arabia basically cobbled the Taliban together after the Soviets were defeated. So they are a weird hybrid of najdi dawah and this other movement from the 19th century called the Deobandi. In Arabic a talib is a student. The Taliban get their name because they were originally students (talibs) in a Deobandi madrasa. The Deobandis come from a particular radical sub group of Hanafis who formed in India (they are named after the town where their school was founded). They formed themselves directly in response to colonial British rule unlike ibn Wahhab who never interacted with colonial powers. Officially the Deobandi are Maturidi rather than Athari. They are not Salafi. In fact they're known for being too wedded to legal precedent. The Hanafi as a madhab also give greater weight to local custom which the Taliban do as well. They were influenced by the najdi dawh. Some less extreme Deobandis are Sufis. But the Taliban generally are anti-Sufi and anti mawlid (celebrating Prophet Muhammad's birthday). The oppose visiting shrines and graves. First wave najdi dawah groups like ISIS don't consider shia to be Muslims. I don't know the Taliban's position on this because the announced that Afghanistan would have two court systems. One Hanafi for Sunnis and and Jaffari for shia (the shia have their own madhabs and creeds). But they also have a history of brutalizing shia so that may just be pragmatism until they solidify control. The Deobandi movement is also much more sympathetic to nationalism than than najdi dawah groups. That's why the ISI funded a lot of radical Deobandi movements in the 90s. To fight India in Kashmir.

Ok, I think that provides some context. If you have any questions I will answer them as best I can (inshallah). Again, I am not a scholar. But I will do my best.

 

 

 

[Peace]

9 hours ago, Machine_Washable said:

Hello Phatmass. I'm sure everyone has seen the news that the Taliban has retaken Afghanistan. So I thought I would provide some history on where the Taliban come from. As I have stated before I am not a scholar. So anything I say should be understood to be from a layman.

Madhabs

Sunni Islam is divided into four schools of thought. These are called madhabs. They consist of Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i and Hanbali. A madhab is a legal framework by which a scholar derives opinions (how much is analogy allowed, what weight is given to custom etc). Technically lay Muslims do not have madhabs. But colloquially we will refer to ourselves as Hanafi or Shafi'i etc because a community and masjid will typically be predominately made up of adherents of a particular madhab. The madhabs are pretty similar and most of the differences are about matters such as where one holds ones hands when praying or other technical issues that a non Muslim probably would not notice. Generally speaking if you know where someone's family is from you know what madhab they belong to. Because historically a ruler would adopt a particular madhab (although all four schools recognize each other as legitimate). So since the Ottomans were Hanafi Turkish and Balkan Muslims are typically Hanafi. North Africans are typically Malaki. Saudis are typically Hanbali. The list goes on.

Creed

All Sunni Muslims believe in Allah (SWT) and that Muhammad (SAW) is the final messenger of Allah. There are six articles of faith that every Sunni Muslim believes.

-There is no God but Allah (SWT) and He is one.
-Angels exist
-Belief in the scriptures sent down by Allah.
-Belief in the Prophets and that Muhammad (SAW) is the final prophet of Allah (SWT)
-Belief in the last day
-Belief in qadar

Within these boundaries there are three mainstream schools of Islam. Historically the most predominate school are the Ashari. There are also the Maturidi and the Athari. The Ashari and the Maturidi are very similar and their students of knowledge will sometimes learn from each other's tectbooks. My family is not Ashari or Maturidi so I really don't know a lot about the technical differences between the schools. The Ashari and Maturidi schools generally accept the use of philosophy in understanding and interpreting theology and kalam. They also believe that faith is dichotomous. You have it or don't have it. In the current day and age they are also generally much more friendly to tasawwuf, also known as Sufism.

The Athari are smaller school. They typically believe that faith increases or decreases with deeds and performance of rites like the five daily prayers. Athari typically believe that a Muslim who abandons the five daily prayers is an unbeliever (although what counts as abandoning the prayers is a matter of dispute).

Historically the big difference between the Athari and the Ashari/Maturidi comes in interpreting Allah's attributes. When we are told that Allah loves us what does this mean? The Ashari/Maturidi typically say that Allah does not literally love us because this is encompassing Allah's grandeur within human understanding. They say that what is meant is that Allah extends His mercy to us or something else. The Athari say "no, Allah (SWT) loves us". Similarly the Hadith ascribe motion to Allah. What do we make of this? The Ashari borrowed from Greek philosophy and said that since motion is an accidental property this cannot be ascribed literally to Allah. So they interpret it non literally. The Athari say that when a seemingly anthropomorphic quality is ascribed to Allah we affirm that modality without asking how. As you have probably gathered from this the Athari are typically much more skeptical of human reason. Athari are also typically hostile to Sufism, resist calling out to the dead, and emphasize the humanness of the Prophet Muhammad (SAW). 

Salafism and 19th Century Movements

So then, where do the Taliban fall into this? Well, I have to spend just another moment on history. We have four schools of thought and we have three creeds that encompass Sunni Islam. In the 19th century the Muslim world began to fall to the West. The Ottoman Empire was weakening daily and India has essentially run by the British East India Company. Not only that but there was a lot of rigidity and ossification in the madhabs. Various reform movements popped up. The most notable being the Salafi. The Salafi claimed to reject rigid adherence to a madhab and to instead look back to the Qur'an and the Sunnah (the sayings and deeds of Prophet Muhammad (SAW)). The movement popped up in a number of places. Among them Saudi Arabia and spearheaded by ibn Wahhab. He was a Hanbali jurist who subscribed to an extremely radical version of the Athari creed. His brother was also a Hanbali scholar and wrote a treatise denouncing him (as did many Hanabali scholars at the time). The Saudi government has spent a lot of money whitewashing ibn Wahhab's legacy but the truth is that he believed that anybody who didn't subscribed entirely to his extremely radical Athari thought was an unbeliever. And not only that, anybody who did not agree with him that these other Muslims were unbelievers was, themselves, an unbeliever.

My family is mostly Athari/salafi sympathetic. We do not believe in going to Sufi shrines or asking saints to petition Allah for us. I believe asking saints to intervene for you is forbidden. But I don't believe the people who do it are unbelievers. So in ibn Wahhab's paradigm that makes me an unbeliever. Ibn Wahhab waged relentless war on the Muslim world and the Ottoman empire. He eventually surrounded and starved the city of Mecca until the scholars of Mecca (some of the greatest scholars of the Muslim world) agreed to sign a statement affirming that they had been unbelievers and he was right to wage war on them. They did this because he was starving the entire civilian population. It is shameful. Were it not for our world running on petrol ibn Wahhab would have been an obscure figure. He was denounced by the great Hanabli and Athari scholars of his day. To say nothing of the Asharis. But he formed an alliance with the Saudi family. Oil was discovered in Saudi Arabia and ibn Wahhab's ideology (called the najdi dawah) was pushed by oil wealth.

Saudi Arabia (and specifically the University of Madinah) because a major hub of Salafi thought. There is a huge spectrum of Salafi scholars. Most Salafi influenced scholars are moderate and don't reject the madhabs. They just believe it's important not to blindly follow your madhab. Great Saudi scholars of the Salafi movement turned down the temperature of the najdi dawah movement because they where out of control. The took the good things of Salafism and pushed back and moderated the extremes. But groups like ISIS and Al Quaeda look to and are inspired by ibn Wahhab and the first wave najdi dawah movement.

The Taliban are actually different (somewhat) from groups like ISIS and Al Quaeda. The ISI (Pakistan's CIA) and Saudi Arabia basically cobbled the Taliban together after the Soviets were defeated. So they are a weird hybrid of najdi dawah and this other movement from the 19th century called the Deobandi. In Arabic a talib is a student. The Taliban get their name because they were originally students (talibs) in a Deobandi madrasa. The Deobandis come from a particular radical sub group of Hanafis who formed in India (they are named after the town where their school was founded). They formed themselves directly in response to colonial British rule unlike ibn Wahhab who never interacted with colonial powers. Officially the Deobandi are Maturidi rather than Athari. They are not Salafi. In fact they're known for being too wedded to legal precedent. The Hanafi as a madhab also give greater weight to local custom which the Taliban do as well. They were influenced by the najdi dawh. Some less extreme Deobandis are Sufis. But the Taliban generally are anti-Sufi and anti mawlid (celebrating Prophet Muhammad's birthday). The oppose visiting shrines and graves. First wave najdi dawah groups like ISIS don't consider shia to be Muslims. I don't know the Taliban's position on this because the announced that Afghanistan would have two court systems. One Hanafi for Sunnis and and Jaffari for shia (the shia have their own madhabs and creeds). But they also have a history of brutalizing shia so that may just be pragmatism until they solidify control. The Deobandi movement is also much more sympathetic to nationalism than than najdi dawah groups. That's why the ISI funded a lot of radical Deobandi movements in the 90s. To fight India in Kashmir.

Ok, I think that provides some context. If you have any questions I will answer them as best I can (inshallah). Again, I am not a scholar. But I will do my best.

How are the Taliban viewed throughout the Muslim world, and in Afghanistan in particular?

In the US (and I'm guessing other Western media outlets too) the Taliban are painted as if they are Satan incarnate. Like, they are some group of maniacs that are just hell-bent on killing people and oppressing women.

But I just have trouble buying into the media story, especially now after what we have seen in the past few days. There is this group of about 200,000 men that are supposedly the devil hell-bent on killing, raping, and pillaging everything in sight, but in a country of 32 million people, nobody will fire one single shot of resistance against them, even when you are being supported with money and weapons by the US Government? Does that story make sense?

I'm watching CNN, in some of the videos you see people hopping on planes to get out. In other videos you see people walking up to the Taliban soldiers in the city and taking selfies with them. What that says to me is that this is kind of an ethnic conflict of sorts, and that in reality a significant portion of the Afghan people are supportive of the Taliban, or are at least sympathetic to them in certain aspects.

Edited August 21, 2021 by Peace

[Mercedes]

How do the different radical groups get on with each other?  With the Taliban in charge, will ISIS and Al Quaeda be trying to get control from them?

[ZeroM]

I view it as if the hillbillies have taken over.  The mean sort, like Deliverance.  

[Machine_Washable]

10 hours ago, Peace said:

How are the Taliban viewed throughout the Muslim world, and in Afghanistan in particular?

In the US (and I'm guessing other Western media outlets too) the Taliban are painted as if they are Satan incarnate. Like, they are some group of maniacs that are just hell-bent on killing people and oppressing women.

But I just have trouble buying into the media story, especially now after what we have seen in the past few days. There is this group of about 200,000 men that are supposedly the devil hell-bent on killing, raping, and pillaging everything in sight, but in a country of 32 million people, nobody will fire one single shot of resistance against them, even when you are being supported with money and weapons by the US Government? Does that story make sense?

I'm watching CNN, in some of the videos you see people hopping on planes to get out. In other videos you see people walking up to the Taliban soldiers in the city and taking selfies with them. What that says to me is that this is kind of an ethnic conflict of sorts, and that in reality a significant portion of the Afghan people are supportive of the Taliban, or are at least sympathetic to them in certain aspects.

These are good insights and observations. 
 

My impression of how Afghans are viewing this— Many are worried. For all kinds of reasons. Poppy farmers are worried. Many women are worried. Certainly the Shia are worried. However I think a lot of Afghans view the Taliban as the only faction capable of providing stability and so many are supporting them as the lesser evil. The impression I have is that after 2001 many Afghans we’re happy to be rid of the Taliban. That has since turned and many have come around to the Taliban. There are many reasons for this. 20 years of occupation is a long time for anyone. More importantly though is how incredibly corrupt the Kabul regime was. You had a tremendous amount of corruption with no accountability. You even had Kabul officials and police commanders doing such horrendous things as taking kids for sex. I’m not making that up. An American soldier was punished by America for beating up a police commander who bragged about raping a boy beating his mother when she tried to get her son back. I think that story is illustrative. You have incredible corruption and predation and the occupying forces had to punish one of their own soldiers for refusing to look the other way because they needed to keep good relations with the Kabul regime. So given this, I think many Afghans look to the Taliban as being too harsh but more fair. Something to consider is that Afghanistan is a very conservative and often misogynistic society even within the anti Taliban factions. So when the Taliban promise to bring stability and justice people are open to that message and maybe not as concerned with their excesses as they should be. You are correct that historically there has been an ethnic component to this conflict. Even back in 2000 there were many portions of Afghanistan where the Taliban only had nominal control because they were controlled by non Pashtun (the main ethnicity of the Taliban). I think I’m particularly the Tajiks and the Taliban did not get along.

I think what is notable with this takeover is what a political victory this is for the Taliban. As far as I have seen those non Pashtun areas have offered no real resistance. More shockingly the Shia don’t seem to be fighting. Back in 2001 the Taliban were basically engaged in a genocide against the Shia. They have clearly done a lot of work to convince Pashtuns and non Pashtuns and even non Sunnis that they have chilled out. 
 

Now will this more mellow Taliban last? I don’t know. I hope so for the sake of the people of Afghanistan. But I am concerned for a few reasons. 1-As I said the Taliban were originally students at a madrassa. However how scholarly they are I don’t know. My impression is that they are not many great scholars in their ranks. I don’t mean that to disparage their students of knowledge. But to be frank Afghanistan is not a very educated country (although it is historically a land of great scholars). The Taliban, at least the old Taliban, were boys who grew up in refugee camps in Pakistan. All they really knew was life in a refugee camp or fighting invaders. That limits your horizon. Creating a new state on the sharia will require imagination and great learning. I don’t know if they have that. I hope they do. 2- They are nominally Deobandi. As far as I know the Deobandi are pretty big on falling back on historical legal precedent from within their own school. So I don’t know how imaginative they can be. 3-They’ll likely be undermined with economic sanctions and outside interference. Which typically makes regimes more harsh. 
 

There are some reasons to be optimistic. The Taliban of the past would not have made these political agreements. Moreover while the Deobandi are known for being inflexible they come from the Hanafi madhab which is actually the most liberal by reputation (a strange paradox). The Ottoman Empire and the Mughal Empire of India were both Hanafi.  As such this school had to have more pragmatism on many issues like the rights of religious minorities and dealing with non Muslim powers than the Hanabli school for example (the Hanbali school has mostly existed in Saudi Arabia and has always been a very small school). The Taliban have said they will be Hanafi and not specifically Deobandi. So maybe they are expanding intellectually a bit. 
 

But I don’t want to mince words. The Taliban are very harsh and, in my opinion, denied many people their rights due to their zealousness and rigidity. I would not want to be in Afghanistan right now. I just hope for the sake of the people that the Taliban have truly changed. 
 

I think that answers your questions but if I missed something or something is unclear please let me know. 
 

Ultimately time will tell and Allah knows best 

[Machine_Washable]

6 hours ago, Mercedes said:

How do the different radical groups get on with each other?  With the Taliban in charge, will ISIS and Al Quaeda be trying to get control from them?

A very good question. The short answer is that I don’t know. I’m not, and would not want to be, affiliated with any radical group. I don’t know how the Taliban and Al Quaeda got along. Because if Al Quaeda were being consistent with their najdi dawah ideology they’d consider the Taliban to be (at best) in serious error or (at worst) unbelievers. They both have very strict interpretations of Sharia law. But Al Quaeda likely viewed aspects of the Talibans prayers to be deficient. I don’t know how the Taliban viewed Al Quaeda. I think the Taliban is less ideological on matters of creed than groups like Al Quaeda but I’m not sure.  Now, regarding ISIS, as far as I know ISIS and the Taliban don’t get along at all. ISIS is actually even more extreme that Al Quaeda. I know they were fighting a few years ago and I believe the Taliban routed ISIS. But that’s all I know. There could be connections. I wouldn’t be shocked. There are some things they are both extreme about. Particularly towards local Sufi practices that both groups consider bid’ah (religious innovation) and shirk (associating partners with Allah (SWT)). But I’m pretty sure ISIS considers Taliban unbelievers. I don’t know how the Taliban views ISIS. Obviously they fought them but I don’t know if that’s just political or if they view ISIS as unbelievers or deviants. 
 

 

[ArciMoto]

On 8/21/2021 at 12:07 AM, Machine_Washable said:

...Sunni Islam is divided into four schools of thought. These are called madhabs. They consist of Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i and Hanbali. A madhab is a legal framework by which a scholar derives opinions (how much is analogy allowed, what weight is given to custom etc). Technically lay Muslims do not have madhabs. But colloquially we will refer to ourselves as Hanafi or Shafi'i etc because a community and masjid will typically be predominately made up of adherents of a particular madhab.

thanks for the insightful outline giving outsiders a lay of the land (like above)

at university took a literature/poli-sci class where I had an opportunity to read an english translation of the quran, also it was there I learned the basic differences sunni vs shia

a few years after university even managed to visit that part of the world following the silk route (just before 9/11 happened)

in samarqand even managed to visit a rebuilt madrasa,... but since that part of the world was an occupied soviet state after WW II lots of the muslim scholarship work (from the past) had been swept away,...

https://muslimheritage.com/samarqand-observatory/

looking at history, first the british (i.e. the great game), the misadventures of the USSR in the 1980s and now misadventures of the USA after 9/11,... I'm not too surprised the tribal "stans" have not been able to modernize and enter a more peaceful period because the clan's in the region have a mindset that goes back thousands of years

so given a mix of tribal mentality that has a long, long, long memory,... doubt outsiders will ever be able to greatly influence the region,... IOW think change can only be successful if ideas for change come from w/ in

have been watching "counting the costs" on al jazeera news for years,... I mention this because many Americans only watch FOX or MSNBC so they have a very limited "political pundit bias" POV

anyway on this weeks "counting the costs" (which is a program about about business and economics),... there was an indepth discussion about the "economic" future of afghanistan  

https://www.aljazeera.com/program/counting-the-cost/2021/8/21/the-taliban-economy-can-afghanistan-avert-a-financial-collapse

long story short, doubt a powerful outsider country like china wants to fill in the breach (when the USA leaves) AND given the religious bias of Al Quaeda and now ISIS,... doubt there is going to be much culture/economic modernization in Afghanistan

which brings me to a question,... what's your take on the future of Pakistan???

IOW now that it looks like Afghanistan is going to be very inward "religious" looking is the culture of neighboring Pakistan going to be more open to modernize???

the example I'm thinking about is akin to the difference between North Korea  (i.e. inward looking) and south Korea (which since the end of the Korean War has become a modern developed country)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Ice_nine]

How do you think the Christians are going to fare?

[Machine_Washable]

35 minutes ago, Ice_nine said:

How do you think the Christians are going to fare?

I have never heard of a Christian community in Afghanistan. So I don’t know. If I had to guess My hunch would be that their rights will not be respected for two major reasons. Firstly, as I said the Taliban are Deobandi and I don’t think they are likely to see that their fiqh books apply to a very different understanding of the state and a political community than exists in the modern nation state paradigm. Secondly, I think that there will be suspicion of Afghan Christians as being agents of the west. 
 

I tried looking for information about Christians under the Taliban before but couldn’t fond anything. This seems to be because the number of Christians are so small. They definitely won’t allow for missionary work and I’m sure converting to Christianity will be illegal. 

[Machine_Washable]

10 hours ago, ArciMoto said:

thanks for the insightful outline giving outsiders a lay of the land (like above)

at university took a literature/poli-sci class where I had an opportunity to read an english translation of the quran, also it was there I learned the basic differences sunni vs shia

a few years after university even managed to visit that part of the world following the silk route (just before 9/11 happened)

in samarqand even managed to visit a rebuilt madrasa,... but since that part of the world was an occupied soviet state after WW II lots of the muslim scholarship work (from the past) had been swept away,...

https://muslimheritage.com/samarqand-observatory/

looking at history, first the british (i.e. the great game), the misadventures of the USSR in the 1980s and now misadventures of the USA after 9/11,... I'm not too surprised the tribal "stans" have not been able to modernize and enter a more peaceful period because the clan's in the region have a mindset that goes back thousands of years

so given a mix of tribal mentality that has a long, long, long memory,... doubt outsiders will ever be able to greatly influence the region,... IOW think change can only be successful if ideas for change come from w/ in

have been watching "counting the costs" on al jazeera news for years,... I mention this because many Americans only watch FOX or MSNBC so they have a very limited "political pundit bias" POV

anyway on this weeks "counting the costs" (which is a program about about business and economics),... there was an indepth discussion about the "economic" future of afghanistan  

https://www.aljazeera.com/program/counting-the-cost/2021/8/21/the-taliban-economy-can-afghanistan-avert-a-financial-collapse

long story short, doubt a powerful outsider country like china wants to fill in the breach (when the USA leaves) AND given the religious bias of Al Quaeda and now ISIS,... doubt there is going to be much culture/economic modernization in Afghanistan

which brings me to a question,... what's your take on the future of Pakistan???

IOW now that it looks like Afghanistan is going to be very inward "religious" looking is the culture of neighboring Pakistan going to be more open to modernize???

the example I'm thinking about is akin to the difference between North Korea  (i.e. inward looking) and south Korea (which since the end of the Korean War has become a modern developed country)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Very interesting points. I would like to visit Uzbekistan someday. It is very true that a lot of Islamic scholarship was lost under the USSR. 

I don’t know a lot about Afghanistan. I’m not Hanafi so I don’t run into a lot of them. I just know some about the intellectual currents that go into some extremist groups so that’s why I’m providing some context. I say this because I honestly don’t know how true the comments about tribalism are in Afghanistan. My impression is that there is truth to this. But of course you also can’t discount the effects being continually invaded by empires inflicts on a people. From what I have seen Afghanistan is really in trouble. For example, opium addiction is huge because so much of the population suffers from PTSD and the Poppy fields have been flourishing. What will happen when the Taliban starts eradicating the fields? I don’t know. 
 

Now, turning to modernization. It’s important to consider what is meant by that. If modernize means embracing American cultural liberalism then that’s not happening. Even without the Taliban Afghanistan is a very conservative place and people don’t want pornography on television like you see in even mainstream shows in the west. But could Afghanistan have a deemphasis on tribalism and rule of law and much more economic growth and stability? I think the answer is yes. And I think the people want that and that’s why they’ve accepted the Taliban. However the question is will that happen. I don’t know. I’m pessimistic for the reasons I mentioned in my response to @Peace but time will tell and Allah knows best. 
 

 Now, as to Pakistan, I really know even less about Pakistan. I think a lot of Pakistani students at prestigious schools (so the future elite) have embraced American social justice leftism wholesale. While the population is quite conservative and pious. So I’m sure that will cause some problems. I don’t know what will happen between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Parts of Pakistan are dominated by the Taliban. There’s definitely some support for the Taliban in the Pakistani population. But I think the elites fear the Taliban because they can destabilize Pakistan. But Pakistani politics are very complicated and I don’t really understand them. 

[chrysostom]

I was reading about bacha bazi (dancing boys), and how it got the death penalty under the Taliban but has basically re-flourished under the US occupation with the USA's full knowledge and sometimes protection. It does make you think.

[Mercedes]

43 minutes ago, chrysostom said:

I was reading about bacha bazi (dancing boys), and how it got the death penalty under the Taliban but has basically re-flourished under the US occupation with the USA's full knowledge and sometimes protection. It does make you think.

Is that a defence of the Taliban's regime?

[chrysostom]

1 hour ago, Mercedes said:

Is that a defence of the Taliban's regime?

No, what would lead you to make that inference?

I was thinking mostly about what sort of things would make the Taliban able to take over the country so quickly. Military force is one thing. Enjoying actual political support from various areas might be another, and since machine washable brought up bacha bazi I did wonder whether this had something to do with it.

Edited August 24, 2021 by chrysostom

[Peace]

10 hours ago, Mercedes said:

Is that a defence of the Taliban's regime?

From the standpoint of many Afghani people I wonder if the Taliban isn't viewed as a better option than the US backed puppet regime that was in place?

From what I've been reading there was hella corruption in the US backed government. People seem to view the Taliban as very harsh and strict, but fair. I was reading some information about how many people actually preferred to go to the Taliban courts to resolve disputes, because they didn't trust the other one to be fair.

It's not that the Taliban is "good" per se, but it seems that some folks view it as the lesser of two evils.

I mean, it's a legit point. If you have a US backed government in place, people are molesting boys and the US backed government lets them get away with it for political reasons, but then the Taliban says "hell no, let's put these molesters to death", which looks better to you?

Edited August 24, 2021 by Peace

[Machine_Washable]

14 hours ago, chrysostom said:

I was reading about bacha bazi (dancing boys), and how it got the death penalty under the Taliban but has basically re-flourished under the US occupation with the USA's full knowledge and sometimes protection. It does make you think.

Yes. The “origin story” of the Taliban that I heard is that a warlord was having some kind of dispute with another tribe. So they kidnapped a boy from that tribe and raped him. Some local students at a madrassa decided “enough is enough” and took up arms against him. I want to stress that 1-I don’t remember all the details of the story. That’s just my best recollection and 2-I don’t know if this story is true or not. My point in bringing it up is not to claim it is true. But to point out that the Taliban have a cultivated a reputation of delivering justice. Even if it’s tough justice to the outside world. 
 

There are some parts of Afghanistan where the Taliban is genuinely popular. But, as I said before, my impression is that much of the country was happy to be rid of them in 2001. If the Kabul government was a clean government I don’t think the Taliban would have taken over as they did. I think they’d take back some areas for sure. But I think there’s be a lot more fighting.