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Taliban-controlled Afghanistan’s shadowy supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, has issued a message for Eid al-Adha in which he promises the Afghan people that Afghanistan will soon be a prosperous, successful country. As fanciful as that promise is, Akhundzada is basing it on a universally recognized Islamic principle: obedience to Allah will bring success in this world as well as the next. It’s a theory that can be tested, and has been; and in every such test, it has been found wanting.
Amu.tv reported Sunday that “in an Eid message focused on preserving the Taliban rule and adherence to the Sharia law, Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada called on the people to make sacrifices to sustain the Taliban administration and to be grateful for the ‘peaceful’ life they have attained under the ‘Islamic system.’” The Afghan people are already sacrificing plenty for Taliban rule, and more is to come, but Akhundzada promises that better days are ahead.
“In his message,” Amu says, “he addressed the people as ‘faithful and mujahid brothers’ and ‘honorable Afghan brothers,’ and devoted much of the statement to preserving Taliban rule and promoting obedience to religious decrees. The statement made no reference to women, girls or their rights.” And there is no reason why it should have been expected to do so. For Hibatullah Akhundzada and other Sharia-adherent Muslims, women are of no importance except for childbearing and domestic assistance. The concept of women’s rights is a foreign, Western invention, and is despised accordingly.
Akhundzada is proud of the system that has brought this about, and calls on the Afghan people to stay the course, saying: “Let us all endure more hardships and make sacrifices to protect it,” that is, the Taliban’s Sharia rule. Akhundzada called the maintaining of the Taliban’s Islamic system as a “shared responsibility” and exhorted Afghans to foil the “malicious intentions of enemies.” He insisted that under the rule of the Taliban, “the Islamic rights of all citizens are protected and that injustice is prevented.” Akhundzada said: “In this system, the Sharia rights of all citizens are protected and preserved.”
Amu finds this a bit much, and comments: “The remarks come despite continuing international criticism of Taliban policies toward women and girls. Since returning to power in 2021, Taliban leader has issued dozens of decrees restricting women’s freedoms, including banning girls from secondary schools and universities and preventing women from attending most medical training programs.” Amu does not point out, however, that the Taliban’s reduction of women to commodities and the status of domestic beasts of burden is based entirely upon Islamic principles, so no other course of action could have been expected from Afghanistan’s leaders.
Amu notes that “as in previous Eid messages, Akhundzada urged the people to follow religious rulings without hesitation, describing adherence to Sharia as the path to prosperity and success.” And indeed, the promise is in the Qur’an: obedience to Allah will bring worldly success: “Allah has promised those of you who believe and do good works that he will surely make them succeed on the earth even as he caused those who were before them to succeed, and that he will surely establish for them their religion which he has approved for them, and will give them in exchange safety after their fear.” (24:55)
Yet Hibatullah Akhundzada is wrong. This promise has not been kept. The believers in Allah have not succeeded on this earth, nor has their failure been disconnected from their religion. Islam is responsible for the economic failure of majority Muslim states, and for the lowly status of women and non-Muslims within them. Historian and sociologist Hugh Fitzgerald has noted that their “inshallah-fatalism” and lack of a work ethic condemn Islamic societies to poverty everywhere, for the jizya is not currently collected, even in countries where non-Muslim communities suffer considerable institutionalized discrimination and harassment, such as Pakistan, Indonesia, and Egypt. There is much, much more about this in The Tragedy of Islam: Failure and Excuses.
Note also that Akhundzada assumes that what the Taliban are implementing is indeed Sharia. Many non-Muslim politicians in the West would deny that, and insist that Sharia is benign, and has nothing to do with what the Taliban are doing. Yet none of these politicians have produced an actual version of Sharia that teaches differently from what the Taliban are implementing. Nor can they do so, for no such version of Sharia exists. Yet they persist in demanding that everyone assume that Sharia is harmless and cuddly, and that anyone who thinks otherwise is an “Islamophobe.”
Hibatullah Akhundzada knows better. Western leftists should take note — if, that is, they had any interest in conforming their ideas to reality.
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