Taliban

TALIBAN

Islamic fundamentalist group in Afghanistan.

The Taliban appeared in Afghanistan in late 1994. In September 1996 they took Kabul and hanged Najibullah, Afghanistan's Soviet-sponsored president. Subsequently, they banned female access to education and employment, and imposed draconian Islamic laws that called for severe punishments, including the stoning to death of proven adulterers and the amputating of thieves' hands and feet. The Taliban's Islamic fundamentalism was a kind of transnational street force that had the potential to topple established governments through agitation, or to terrorize even much larger nations. Increasingly, fear of Islamic fundamentalism replaced the old dread of communism in the United States.

The term taliban is derived from the Persian and Pashtun plural of the Arabic word talib ("seeker of knowledge"). Before 1947, Afghan religious students studied in India, and when it was partitioned, they went to Pakistan. Their favorite madrasa in India was the Dar al-Ulum (House of Sciences) of the University of Deoband in Uttar Pradesh, which was established in 1862. It was known for its anti-Western orientation and stood for the independence of a united India. The Deoband Dar al-Ulum trained young, working- and lower-middle-class Muslims, who received a traditional religious education and joined the ranks of "big" and "small" mullahs in masajid (mosques).

Intellectually, the Taliban are heirs to the traditional affinity between the Deoband Dar al-Ulum and the Afghan ulama (Islamic scholars). After 1947, ulama in Pakistan established Houses of Science (Diyar al-Ulum) in all the provinces of Pakistan. The number of graduates of different levels of education from these institutions, especially from 1982 to 1987, was impressive. The Taliban leaders were the product of these theological seminaries. Their education is frozen in time: All Sunni theological institutions' curricula are based upon the curriculum established by the eighteenth-century scholar Mullah Nizamud-Din, who flourished during the period of Aurangzeb (d. 1707). This curriculum comprises:

1. Arabic grammar;
2. syntax;
3. rhetoric;
4. philosophy of logic;
5. dialectical theology (ilm al-kalam) ;
6. Qurʾanic exegesis (tafsir) ;
7. Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) ;
8. roots of Islamic jurisprudence (usul al-fiqh) ;
9. accounts of sayings and deeds by the Prophet and immediate followers (hadith) ; and
10. some mathematics.

The Taliban's educational system emphasized taqlid, the following of traditional Islam, which neglected modern scientific training. They divided the world into Dar al-Islam (the Muslim states, especially Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Pakistan, which had recognized their rule) and Dar al-Harb (the non-Muslim states, which were projected as the enemies of Islam and Muslims). This bifurcation of the world into external enemies and permanent friends generated an exceptionally intolerant mind-set, which distinguished the Taliban's educational system.

The Taliban's political structure was based, according to them, on that of the four "rightly guided" caliphs (632–662) who succeeded the prophet Muhammad. The Taliban were "committed to establishing an exemplary Islamic rule" for the world, and especially for the Muslim states. Emulating the early caliphate, the Taliban created a supreme council (Majles al-Shura) of twenty individuals. Almost 1,500 Sunni ulama who represented various ethnic tribes elected young Mullah Muhammad Omar amir al-muʾminin ("commander of the faithful"). The majority of the council members were Pashtuns; fourteen of them had suffered corporeal loss while fighting against the Soviet Union (Mullah Omar, for example, lost an eye). Because of the Pashtun ethnic origin of the Taliban, their jihad became a struggle for power against the Tajiks in the Panjsher Valley and the Uzbeks in the north.

During the 1980s, Osama bin Ladin established guerrilla warfare bases in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union. After the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, bin Ladin turned his attention to the United States. On 11 September 2001 his terrorists attacked the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C. In retaliation, the United States invaded Afghanistan, eliminated the Taliban's rule, and destroyed bin Ladin's terror infrastructure.

see also afghanistan; bin ladin, osama; dar al-ulum; najibullah; omar, muhammad (mullah); sunni islam.

Bibliography

Kamal, Matinuddin. The Taliban Phenomenon: Afghanistan, 1994–1997. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Marsden, Peter. The Taliban: War, Religion, and the New Order in Afghanistan. London: Zed Books, 1998.

Rashid, Ahmed. Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil, and Fundamentalism in Central Asia. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000.

hafeez malik