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| Afghanistan |
| Afghans losing that Old Time Religion |
| 2002-03-12 |
Outside the shrine last month, Afghans exuberantly celebrated the new era of civilian rule. Pop music, banned by the Taliban, blasted from loudspeakers around the corner. Across the street from the mosque, a movie theater advertised reruns of old Indian films, which were forbidden by the regime, as were any other images of living beings. On the wall of a house adjacent to the mosque, a poster vendor was selling large, colorful portraits of scantily clad Indian movie stars. Confronted by the pent-up wave of secular behavior, older mullahs warn that religious freedom may cause Afghans to abandon Islam altogether. I think we'd all be really surprised if Afghanistan ceased being a predominantly Muslim country. But the Sufis, Ismailis and Shi'ites will probably gain proportionately. You can't beat people into being devout. As soon as you stop beating them, they'll do what they really want to do. That's the "religion" that the US has to export - the belief that people should be left alone to make their own decisions. They'll usually find God where they've been finding him in the past - in the USA and Europe in church, in Afghanistan in the mosque, in (most of) India in the temple. That bit of freedom is actually just what the Moslem world needs. Protestantism brought quite a bit of intellectual vigor to Europe with its rise. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |