The estimated 15,000-20,000 Christians who remain in Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover “face routine torture and persecution from both the government and their own friends, families and communities,” according to a new report.
This is not a new development. From the start on August 15, 2021, matters significantly worsened for Christians when the Biden administration abruptly surrendered Afghanistan to the Taliban. The poorly-planned defeat of U.S. troops caused the Central Asian nation to fall right back into the grips of the Taliban, one of the Islamic terrorist groups complicit in the 9/11 attacks on the U.S.
During the chaos of withdrawal, there were reports that the Biden administration was actively preventing the rescue of Christian minorities from what has since become the sharia-enforcing Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.
Once U.S. surrender was complete, reports stated that “Taliban militants are even pulling people off public transport and killing them on the spot if they’re Christians.” Any Afghan caught with a Bible app on their phone was reportedly executed. “How we survive daily only God knows,” a Christian Afghan reported on condition of anonymity. “But we are tired of all the death around us.”
According to the World Watch List 2022, which ranks the 50 nations where Christians are most persecuted for their faith, Afghanistan is now the worst nation in the world in which to be Christian.
Voice of the Martyrs, an international humanitarian nonprofit, also offers the following about the 99.8% Muslim nation:
“Beatings, torture and kidnappings are routine for Christians in Afghanistan…Christians are martyred every year in Afghanistan, but their deaths generally occur without public knowledge. A few are also in prison…Christian converts from Islam are often killed by family members or other radicalized Muslims before any legal proceedings can begin.”
Revealingly, immediate family members are most prone to persecute and murder converts to Christianity. As Todd Nettleton of Voice of the Martyrs recently noted, although conditions for Christians have “certainly worsened” since the Taliban takeover, “the first line of persecution is your family members, it’s your neighbors.” He detailed how converts arouse suspicion when, for instance, they fail to appear for prayers at their mosques. In just the first eight months of the Taliban’s resumption of power, one clandestine Christian man had to relocate his family three times due to the threat of discovery.
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