There’s an online discussion happening now among religion writers about all the uncovered religion angles of the current mess in Afghanistan.
The crux of the Afghanistan quagmire is religious, not simply political. It’s not just some guerrilla group taking over the country. It’s a radical Islamist group that aims to drag Afghanis back to the 7th century. There’s a reason why Afghanistan is vying with North Korea for the world’s worst country in terms of religious persecution.
The question nagging at some of us is what’s not getting covered in the daily drama of thousands of hapless people trying to leave the country despite the Taliban hordes gathered outside the airport. Also, sadly, there are the Marines inside the perimeter who are likewise keeping many people from getting on planes. (The Wall Street Journal has been covering the latter situation better than anyone else).
While my co-writer Clemente Lisi covered the Catholics marooned in this desperate place, I’ve been focusing on coverage of evangelical Protestants, the only other religious group of any size that’s trapped there. (There were Sikhs and Hindus in Afghanistan as well, but they read the tea leaves after terrorists killed 25 Sikhs in March of 2020. After last year’s attack, those who could leave the country, left.)
Recently, India offered to take the estimated 650 Sikhs and Hindus who remain, a move that’s gotten criticism by Indian Muslims who want to get some of their friends out as well, according to the New York Times.
But, right now, there are no government or sympathetic Vatican officials out there willing to fish out the surprising number of evangelical Protestants who have somehow cropped up in this forbidding terrain. We read news accounts of “missionaries” who are stranded in country and I want to know: What missionaries? What converts? Does anyone have facts?
It’s nearly impossible to get reputable statistics at this point and all the news I found was anecdotal and scattered. For starters, scope out the Wikipedia entry for a quick history of recent Christian missions in the country.
Yes, there are the fake stories out there, according to this Aug. 20 USA Today piece, about missionaries supposedly being put to death. Some of these reports have gone viral in social media.
All of which goes to show that no one is reliably reporting on these trapped people. Everything is word-of-mouth and it’s totally possible that the people who know the most about the situation on the ground aren’t talking because any scrap of leaked information may result in someone dying.
But plenty of evangelicals are worried sick about their trapped Christian brothers and sisters. Everyone from Anne Graham Lotz (Billy Graham’s eldest daughter) to leaders at the Gospel Coalition are talking about this secret population of pastors and converts that has somehow flourished ever since the U.S. takeover.
It’s like this open secret and now videos of sobbing Afghan Christians are out there. “The whole world has abandoned us..to the worst situation imaginable,” says the man in the video atop this page. If he dies, he hopes someone will take care of his children.
Imagine having to tape that one. Certainly journalists, political activists and liberal Muslims are in the bull’s eye as well, as tmatt has stressed several times. But the new Christians will be annihilated for sure, as any departure from Islam is seen as worthy of death. See this article in The Hill for a quick primer on what Islamic sharia law entails.
Thus did the U.S. State Department figure it had written a boffo Afghan constitution in 2004, expressly safeguarding what Americans see as the fundamental rights of women and religious minorities. But to be accepted in Afghanistan, that constitution had to stipulate that no law could countermand sharia, and that to the extent there were any inconsistency, sharia governs.
Naturally, progressives were shocked when, despite the parchment promises of religious freedom, Afghan apostates continued to be sentenced to death immediately after the constitution was adopted.
There are organizations purporting to speak for the underground church in Afghanistan such as this group that shared the following:
The Taliban are going door-to-door taking women and children. The people must mark their house with an “X” if they have a girl over 12 years old, so that the Taliban can take them. If they find a young girl and the house was not marked they will execute the entire family. If a married woman 25 years or older has been found, the Taliban promptly kill her husband, do whatever they want to her, and then sell her as a sex slave.
Husbands and fathers have given their wives and daughters guns and told them that when the Taliban come, they can choose to kill them or kill themselves—it is their choice.
What’s interesting, further down in this document, is the claim that the church is “grow[ing] at a historic rate” in Afghanistan second only to Iran where evangelical Protestants are openly multiplying. Christianity Today did a story on this last year even though it’s impossible to get inside Iran to figure out whether people are truly converting to Christianity or just disgusted with 42 years of Islamic government.
The Economist also tried reporting on the Iranian church earlier this year. It’s a story a lot of us would love to sink our claws into, given the time and resources to attempt that work.
So if the same groundwork is being laid in Afghanistan, what religion reporter wouldn’t want to have a look-see? Christianity Today gathered as many people as it could who had knowledge of the hidden church of Afghanistan in this article.
You can pick up a few hints from that piece as to what’s happening on the ground in Afghanistan. One of the more interesting comments was from an “Asian missions leader” who suggested that where western missionaries left off, Chinese missionaries (who will doubtless enter the country under the guise as business people working with China’s Belt and Road Initiative) will pick up.
I see some pretty amazing stories there. I’ve been wanting to report on undercover Chinese missions in Muslim lands for years, but when the very presence of a reporter endangers those you interview, the story has to be let go.
What do we know? In the near future, the story will be grim. For those who have a teen-aged girl, it’s only a matter of days before she’s dragged off to be forcibly “married” to a Taliban fighter. It’s Chibok (what happened to Christian girls in northern Nigeria) all over again. God only knows what’s in store for young sons who will be forced to fight.
Will these folks hide in rural villages? The mountains? In the cities?
Yes, much of the online material about what’s happening over there is anecdotal and scattered. As I’ve looked around for links, I saw one church had posted this: “Most of the church in Afghanistan expects to be martyred in the next couple of weeks.” Unlike Rula Ghani, the Maronite Christian wife of Afghanistan’s deposed president Ashraf Ghani, they don’t have the luxury of leaving.
Fortunately, unlike the former Taliban days, there is much better communication, phone lines, social media and more efficient radio broadcasts of finding out what’s happening in Afghanistan.
There are Christian news networks that know what’s happening on the ground in that country and it’s possible to get digital images and reports to turn rumors into news stories. This is where mainstream reporters must start if they hope to provide a full story of religious life under the Taliban 2.0.
We know the stories are out there. Where are the news organizations with the will to report them?
FIRST IMAGE: Photo of Afghan village by Joel Heard on Unsplash
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