{"id":6301,"date":"2010-07-14T00:58:52","date_gmt":"2010-07-14T06:58:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=6301"},"modified":"2010-07-14T00:58:52","modified_gmt":"2010-07-14T06:58:52","slug":"religious-minorities-in-afghanistan-struggle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2010\/07\/14\/religious-minorities-in-afghanistan-struggle\/","title":{"rendered":"Religious Minorities in Afghanistan Struggle"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Sikh Times<\/em> notes the continuing struggle of minority religions in Afghanistan<\/a>, focusing primarily on Sikhs and Hindus.\u00a0 One Sikh, Awtar Singh, is the only non-Islamic member of Afghanistan’s parliament, and he feels powerless to support those of his or other minority faiths:<\/p>\n

“No one in the government listens to us, but we have to be patient, because we have no other options,” says Singh…<\/p>\n

While tens of thousands of Muslim Afghans have [similar] problems, they at least have politicians or leaders fighting their corner.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The article also noted a fascinating highlight of the differing cultural understandings and acceptance of religious freedom:<\/p>\n

Afghan Hindus were baffled by Western outrage at one Taliban decree \u2013 ordering them to wear a yellow tag to identify their religion \u2013 saying in practical terms it spared their clean-shaven faces from the wrath of the Taliban religious police, who insisted Muslim Afghan men must grow beards.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The repulsiveness of such a practice — largely because of the World War II connotations it invokes — is obvious to most Westerners, but it was practically appreciated by some Afghan Hindus.<\/p>\n

Via the Becket Fund<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Sikh Times notes the continuing struggle of minority religions in Afghanistan, focusing primarily on Sikhs and Hindus.\u00a0 One Sikh, Awtar Singh, is the only non-Islamic member of Afghanistan’s parliament, and he feels powerless to support those of his or other minority faiths: “No one in the government listens to us, but we have to be patient, because we have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[58,739,18,73,44,17,10,59],"class_list":["post-6301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-and-religion","tag-afghanistan","tag-awtar-singh","tag-free-exercise","tag-hindu","tag-islam","tag-religious-expression","tag-religion","tag-sikh"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6301\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}