Florida: The land we call Afghanistan has become a constant migration place through its mountain trajectory.
The diversity of linguistics, culture and religion is the result of thousands of years of trading along the silk road.
More than a dozen ethnic groups are mentioned in the country’s constitution.
The fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban means that some minorities are at risk of persecution.
As a religious and political scholar focused on the Muslim community of Khoja – Shia initially from India but now spread throughout the world – I have studied precarious becoming a religious and ethnic minority in the region.
Among the most lose Afghans today, I will argue, is a group with different Islamic interpretations – especially the Shia Hazara community, the third largest ethnic group in the country, which has faced discrimination for more than a century.
In July 2021, nine Hazara men were killed by Taliban fighters in Southeast Afghanistan, according to a report by Amnesty International – echoing the previous period under the Taliban when Hazara was targeted.
History of rich roots Hazara in South Asia is back in centuries.
Their ancestors were said to include Mongol forces, and a recent genetic analysis had confirmed partial mongol descendants.
Today, Hazara consists of 10% -20% of the Afghan National population, where their traditional homeland is in the middle area called Hazarajat.
This makes them an important minority in the country with 38 million.
There is also a significant Hazara community in Pakistan, as well as Western Diaspora in countries such as the United States and Britain.
Many Hazara outside Afghanistan escaped during the violence of the past five decades, from the coup in 1973 and the Soviet invasion of the Taliban and US-led war rise.
Often the targetswhile Most Hazara is Muslim, the majority of the Shiite minority tradition.
Most Muslims throughout the world follow the Sunni tradition, which recognizes the companion of Muhammad Abu Bakar as his legitimate successor.
However, Shiite Muslims such as Hazara, believe that the cousin of the Prophet and Daughter-in-law, Ali, should have replaced Muhammad after his death in 632 years.
In Afghanistan, such as elsewhere, tensions between the majority of Muslim populations and Shiite Muslims have become a stable source of conflict.
Hazara continued to be targeted and brutally killed by the Taliban in Afghanistan and his colleagues in Pakistan.
The Islamic affiliated groups also target the Shia community in South Asia, including Hazara.
The community has long been among the poorest people and faces Afghan daily harassment, including in finding work.
Not only the religious Taliban estimates a certain vision of “the purity” of Islam and trying to impose it through their strict rules.
However, to understand the Taliban only as Muslim extremists is to lose political and economic reality why and how they operate in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan produces most of the world’s opium, which is used to make heroin, and the Taliban control many benefits.
Violence in the name of religion also helps groups expand their territory and enforce control.
From this perspective, a minority like Hazara pose a threat of two people to the Taliban.
First, their different traditions challenge the Taliban authority to claim religious truth.
Their presence is evidence of the Islamic tradition that signed the original which had accommodated various beliefs for centuries, even though the period of brutal persecution.
For example, the famous Buddhist Buddha statue in the heart of the Hazara region was honored for centuries by the surrounding community, until they were destroyed by the Taliban in 2001.
Second, Afghanistan is a weak state where many tribes and communities work together or compete for power.
Ethonational conflicts that have been established for a long time make it in the interests of the Taliban to maintain minimum dissent.
Hazara’s security represents something bigger: the possibility of pluralistic and multiethnic nations.
However, since the withdrawal of America, thousands of Hazara who survived many years of difficulties and violence had sought protection in Pakistan.
For now, they and other minorities are afraid of increasing periods of oppression and dislocation under the Taliban.
(Conversation)