Critical Thoughts

The Taliban were an Afghan student movement (from Arabic “at-taalibun“, plural for”students”) who rode on populist support and overthrew the mujahideen government at the time who were fighting among themselves and causing divisions in the country. Once the Taliban came to power, they implemented the Shariah and united the various provinces in the country, except for the northern regions. Because of their policies of upholding Islamic laws and their defiance against the “norm”, such as destroying the Bamiyan Buddha statues, they were regarded as “fanatics” and “lunatics”. Such is the stigma associated with the Taliban that even the Islamic movement is not spared from being labelled “another Taliban”, which is rather ironic since such movements mostly stem from the Ikhwaan al-Muslimun in Egypt and are closer to them ideologically, not the Taliban’s. This blogger was himself branded a “Taliban” several times around 2002 - 2003, when the issue was still hot, and even more recently in 2008.

Now what about the nasty stories you hear about the Taliban and where do I stand in this? For the most part, I believe that the stories of the Taliban shooting people in cold blood, amputation and mistreating their women are all bish-bosh and crap, highly exaggerated and is simply anti-Islamic propaganda of the Western powers. The Taliban were fighting a crucial battle in the north against a ragtag band of rapists, murderers and thieves who banded together and called themselves the “Northern Alliance”; do you really believe that they will have the time or could afford to mistreat the very people who were supporting them when they came to power? Further, it is a fact that under Taliban rule, the poppy growing were forcibly wiped out and despite the claims to the contrary, women were still allowed to go to the only medical university in existence in Kabul before it was knocked out in an American bombing raid. It takes an immoral nation to help another immoral group and thus the Northern Alliance took advantage of the chaos and swept to victory,

Such is the negative propaganda of the Taliban, even though I have yet to see a single video evidence of these so-called “beheadings” from a reputable source [apart from the Islamophobia websites]. Having said this, however, there are some things that I do not agree with the Taliban, but that does not mean that I am going to paint all of them with the same brush and call them “evil”. Some of their actions may be misguided, but they are Muslims and my brothers in Islam and who are brothers who don’t help each other instead of disparaging them like the Islam Liberals are so fond of doing?

As for the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddha statues, it was in response to the hypocrisy of the international community who refused aid to the Afghan people who were living in dire straits at the time, and yet were more concerned about the statues. So Mullah Omar issued the order to destroy the statues. In any case, there is absolute justification for it and one may be able to read it here.