Since the U.S. military under the command of Joe Biden pulled so disastrously out of Afghanistan, the administration turning its attention to the escalating threat of angry parents at U.S. school board meetings, the situation for Christians in that country has deteriorated.
The Taliban have stated openly that their goal is to eliminate Christianity entirely in favor of militant Islam, and Islamists have a record of making good on this claim through murder, torture, rape and enslavement, now able to be broadcast on social media.
According to one leader of an Afghan church community, Afghan Christians who failed to escape when the Biden administration fled in August 2021 live in isolation and fear that the radical Islamic government and even the entire society wants them not just silenced, but gone. The report comes from Baptist News Global.
“The Taliban, their plan eventually is the elimination of Christianity, and they have been very open about that,” the head of the Afghan House Church Network, identified as Luke, said during recently on “USCIRF Spotlight,” a weekly podcast of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
The estimated 10,000 to 12,000 Christians currently in Afghanistan have a particularly dangerous mark against them: As converts from Islam, they are even more infuriating to the fundamentalist Sunnis who seized Kabul when U.S. forces exited the country last year, Luke said.
“The moment an Afghan decides to follow Christianity, they know there are a lot of consequences. You can lose your job. University students can get kicked out of school, even from private universities. Some have lost the custody of their children, and they can lose their possessions. They can even lose their lives.”
Speaking from a secret location outside Afghanistan, Luke told USCIRF that Christians also faced persecution even while the U.S. occupied Afghanistan, which it has since 2001.
“Even in the former government, there were groups of people from the attorney general’s office to the judges to the police — they have been hunting Christians,” he said. “So, there are no protections at all for the Afghan Christian community from the family all the way up to the Taliban. That makes them very secretive and reclusive.”
