NEW DELHI, INDIA, August 26, 2023 (Daiji World): When Kabul fell to the Taliban in 2021, there were concerns that some of Afghanistan’s tiny non-Muslim minorities could vanish. Two years on, those fears are becoming realized, a media report said. While Afghanistan’s last-known Jew fled the country shortly after the Taliban takeover, the Sikh and Hindu communities are believed to have shrunk to just a handful of families. Under the Taliban, Sikhs and Hindus have faced severe restrictions, including on their appearances, and have been banned from marking their religious holidays in public, leaving many with no choice but to escape their homeland, RFE/RL reported. In March 2020, 25 worshipers were killed when Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K) militants stormed a Sikh temple in Kabul [photo above]. Following the attack, most of the remaining members of the minority left Afghanistan.

There were up to 100,000 Hindus and Sikhs in Afghanistan in the 1980s. But the war that broke out in 1979 and the onset of growing persecution pushed many out. During the civil war of the 1990s, the Taliban and rival Islamist groups pledged to protect minorities. But many Sikhs and Hindus lost their homes and businesses and fled to India, the report said. When the Taliban regained power in August 2021, it attempted to assuage the fears of non-Muslim Afghans. The militants visited Sikh and Hindu temples to try and assure the remaining members of the communities of their commitment to their safety and well-being. But the Taliban’s draconian restrictions on Sikhs and Hindus have forced many to seek a way out of their homeland, RFE/RL reported. Niala Mohammad, the director of policy and strategy at the nonprofit Muslim Public Affairs Council in Washington, said the situation for religious minorities in Afghanistan — including Hindus, Sikhs, Bahai’s, Christians, Ahmadis, and Shia Muslims — has deteriorated sharply under Taliban rule.

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