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| Afghanistan |
| Iran and Talibs don't like each other |
| 2001-09-15 |
Iran's contacts with the Taliban are very limited, restricted to the operational requirements of an Iranian consulate in Herat, some 100 kilometres (60 miles) from the north-eastern border with Iran, and to discussions on the issue of refugees. Iran is in a state of virtually permanent war along the border, having over the past 10 years lost some thousands of soldiers and police officers dealing with drug traffickers from Afghanistan and, according to Tehran, "protected and encouraged" by the Taliban. Yet on the religious level, the differences between the two systems are total, despite the fact that they are often grouped together in western eyes and that the Taliban has claimed to be inspired by the Iranian example. In that context, some conservative ayatollahs have on occasions shown greater "indulgence" than reformists towards the Taliban, as demonstrated during a recent debate over the comparative struggles in Iran and Afghanistan. In Taliban's Islam, women are forced to wear a head-to-toe veil; they do not go out, they don't work, and young girls have no right to education. In Iran, however, young girls are far more numerous than young men at universities, which also take in many Afghan women. "The Afghan refugee camps also serve to educate girls, and their return to Afghanistan, where they are prisoners at home, is sometimes painful," according to a specialist on humanitarian problems. Furthermore, the principle of an Islamic republic in Iran encompasses the principles of elections and democracy. Tehran was behind the worldwide "dialogue among civilisations" and strongly condemned the destruction of the giant Buddhas of Bamian at the beginning of the year. Shahram Pazouki, a professor at the faculty of philosophy and religious science in Tehran, says "the main distinction revolves around jurisprudence... The Sunni Taliban do not have an up-to-date notion of fatwas (religious decrees). They act as if we were living in the era of 1,400 years ago," in the time of the prophet Mohamed. The Shiites completely reject this interpretation, and acknowledge the passage and progress of time. The Taliban, unlike the Shiites, accord no space at all to spirituality, nothing esoteric." |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |