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Afghanistan destroys books deemed insulting to Sunnis

May 27, 2009 1:49 pm By Marisol Seibold

In the recent case, it was a load of pro-Shi’ite books from Iran that was destined for the bottom of the Helmand River. Ironically, the Afghan government has thus ignited sectarian strife by supposedly aiming to prevent it. And the question remains: are they concerned about Shi’ite Islam as a vehicle for Iranian influence, or simply because it is not Sunni Islam? Beyond that, there are several points of interest:

First, transparency is a prized attribute of a functional government, at least in the Western sense; it does not co-exist well with official corruption. But when a society and a government believes it is permissible to lie or equivocate in order to smooth things over or guard against non-believers (cf. Qur’an 3:28), there exists a disastrous precedent for how the government may do business when officials think no one is looking.

Second, the principle is expandable: What else will the government suppress in order not to “insult” this or that brand of Islam? Quite a bit, if the case of Syed Parwez Kambakhsh is any indication. And that begs the question of what kind of government Western forces are spending untold amounts of blood and treasure to prop up.

Above all, however, the story belies the harmony that would supposedly break out under a pure Islamic state: To say nothing of unbelievers, there could be no harmony as long as everyone was not in agreement about the “purity” of said state, and its fidelity to and enforcement of Sharia law. Even without the sense of entitlement of the “true believers” to govern and the call for open-ended warfare against unbelievers, stories like this make quite a case for the separation of religion and state.

From our Meet The New Boss, Same As The Old Boss department: “Afghan gov’t destroys books it says insult Sunnis,” by Amir Shah and Heidi Vogt for the Associated Press, May 27:

KABUL — The Afghan government quietly dumped more than 1,000 Shiite texts and other books from Iran into a river after a local governor complained that their content insulted the country’s Sunni majority.

The move appeared to be an attempt by President Hamid Karzai’s U.S.-backed government to smooth over a potential thorn in relations between the Muslim sects.

Whoops.

But instead of burying the issue along with the books at the bottom of the Helmand River, the government was facing condemnation Wednesday from Shiite leaders after news leaked a month after the dumping.

“It is a humiliation for all Shiites,” said Mohammad Akbari, a prominent Shiite member of parliament. He said a joint commission of Sunni and Shiite leaders should have reviewed any complaints about the books.

Merchants who’d ordered the books for shops in Kabul said there was nothing offensive about their content and that they were destroyed simply because of prejudice against Shiites, who make up about 20 percent of the population.

The dispute highlights the continuing tension between Sunnis and Shiites in Afghanistan despite efforts by the government to preach tolerance across the sectarian divide.

Shiites were persecuted under the largely Sunni Taliban regime that ruled the country until the U.S.-led invasion in 2001. Since then, the two sects have settled into an uneasy coexistence, with the post-Taliban constitution giving Shiites the right to create some laws that apply only to them.

The latest episode started six months ago when a container full of books arrived in western Nimroz province from neighboring Iran, said the governor’s spokesman, Haaji Nazir.

Nestled among boxes of computer and English instruction manuals were more than 1,000 history and religious books promoting Shiite Islam, Nazir said. Iran is a mostly Shiite country.

“Books like these are more dangerous than Taliban bullets,” Gov. Ghulam Dastagir Azad told The Associated Press.

But the Kabul booksellers who ordered the books said ethnic prejudice motivated the governor, a Sunni from the country’s dominant Pashtun ethnic group. Many Afghan Shiites are ethnic Hazaras.

“He has no respect for the Hazara people,” said Mohammad Ibrahim Sharyati, who said he lost about 2,600 books worth about $40,000.

After seizing the books, authorities in the western province held them at a customs warehouse and sent samples to the Information and Culture Ministry in the capital for a ruling.

A commission found that at least some of the books were “dangerous to the unity of Afghanistan” because they contained interpretations of religion that are offensive to Sunnis, said Deputy Culture Ministry Aleem Tanwir.

“They included incorrect statements about the advice of Prophet Muhammad, and this is very dangerous for our Sunni community,” Tanwir said.

“We contacted the governor of Nimroz and we told him that he cannot allow these books in Afghanistan,” Tanwir said, adding that the books carried propaganda from Iran.

He said the ministry agreed to the idea of dumping the books in the river along the Iranian border as an alternative to burning, because it is against Islam to burn a book that contains the name of the prophet….

Read it all.

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