by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) - The Islamic extremist Taliban have been in power in Afghanistan for three years (since the US withdrawal in August 2021), and the Afghan church is in a “precarious” position, International Christian Concern (ICC) reports.
Since returning to power, the Taliban have again cracked down on religious and societal liberty, making life for Christians extremely dangerous. “When the Taliban came to power, they did so with pledges to recognize more freedoms than in the past,” the Open Doors international Christian advocacy organization states in a current website report. “But that hasn't happened—if an Afghan's Christian faith is discovered, it can be a death sentence, or they can be detained and tortured into giving information about fellow believers.”
“The surrounding society and family structure has no room for religious freedom, and the government upholds this rigid stance. This means Christians—almost all of whom are converts from Islam—must keep their faith secret, or they may simply disappear,” Open Doors reports.
Accordingly, the Afghan church suffers extreme isolation. “Taliban restrictions have severely limited contact with the outside world, and any efforts to send assistance to the church are met with numerous legal and logistical difficulties,” ICC attests in its report. “The Afghan church remains mostly isolated from the global Body of Christ.”
Afghanistan ranks 10 on the Open Doors World Watch List 2024 of the top 50 countries where Christians are persecuted.