The United States’ top body advocating for international religious freedom is warning that the worst is yet to come for the vulnerable religious minorities in Afghanistan under the newly implemented Taliban rule.
U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) held a webinar earlier this month to update the global community on the status of religious minorities in the war-torn region, as CBN News reported.
An already precarious situation for at-risk Christians, Hindus, Sikhs, and practitioners of the Baha’i faith is worsening, the commission warned, as the Afghan economy crumbles and the Taliban re-institutes its barbaric methods of enforcing Sharia law, including amputations and executions.
The Taliban, which controlled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, operates as a Sunni Muslim state and believes in enforcing Sharia law through state coercion.
“Everyone criticized us for the punishments in the stadium, but we have never said anything about their laws and their punishments,” the Taliban’s top enforcer, Mullah Nooruddin Turabi, told The Associated Press in September. “No one will tell us what our laws should be. We will follow Islam and we will make our laws on the Quran.”
Since the takeover in August, reports of lawless murders carried out by Taliban fighters have trickled out to the global community, from the brutal, violent murder of a female police officer to a woman set on fire for cooking poorly for members of the group.
Christians have reportedly been living in hiding, fearing that each passing day they will be targeted by the newly empowered militants.
The USCIRF, CBN News explained, hopes that the country’s plummeting economy could be used as leverage by global leaders to call for more adequate protections from religious minorities, which are now in serious threat of extinction.
According to the commission, the last Jew left the country in September, fearing the Taliban’s wrath.
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