Why is Afghanistan backward and always restless, and why do its nations not get along with each other?
Farid Yunus, Professor of Cultural Anthropology of the Middle East, California State University
It is a question of cultural anthropology.
Even educated people either do not want to understand me or deliberately deny the fact that the problem of the Afghan people is an extremely high level of ethnicity.
Ethnicism exists in every country, but in Afghanistan it is tragic. Ethnicism is a mood and is not associated with a nation or race. And why is the issue of ethnicity in Afghanistan acute and there is no cure for it? This is because in Afghanistan they mixed Islam with the Pashtuns ethnicism, that is, the Pashtunwali (Pushtun code), and prepared a new pie from them called “Afghanism” and spread it all over Afghanistan. If you ask an Afghanistani (people from Afghanistan, such as in America - an American, in France - a Frenchman, in Iran - an Iranian), are you a Muslim or "Afghan", the answer immediately follows: "Afghan".
Today, many Pashtuns are sensitive to the word "Afghanistani" and say that we are first and foremost Afghans. Even someone who is very God-fearing does not say that in the first place, I am a man. He says I am Afghan. After the Afghan jihad against Shuravi, the former situation, which in political science is called the status quo, disappeared because all ethnic groups were included in the jihad and declared their identity after it. The spell of the past, when everyone had to call themselves Afghans, is completely gone.
Those who are not Pashtuns consider Afghanism and Pashtuns the same and do not want to call themselves Afghans, and the number of such people is so large that a book called "I am not an Afghan" has been published in Afghanistan.
Why don't Afghans get along with each other? This is because in Afghanistan you have to call yourself an Afghan, otherwise, you are not from this country. Secondly, you should not oppose the principles that were established during the time of Amir Abdurakhmankhan and strongly strengthened during the time of Naderkhan. For example, I am a Persian-speaking. When I write “university” in Farsi, they tell me that I am the representative of Iran. For God's sake, is there a Dari word for "university" for me to use? Is the Dari language (I am against the use of the word "Dari") with such great poets and literature as Mawlana, Saadi, Bedil, and Iqbal, so weak that it does not have a word for university?
The union of the Pashtun people and the Sunni religion in Afghanistan caused backwardness and poverty because the people were cut off from their identity and now do not accept this. The Pashtunwali tribal spirit spread throughout Afghanistan, and tribal Islam, not Muslim Islam, came into use. For example, mullahs and near-minded people consider dancing to be haram, but when Pashtuns dance atan, it is not haram. Although atan is also a dance, only the national dance of the Pashtuns.
Wahhabis in Afghanistan after jihad attracted more people in the name of religion and Sunnism, and today Wahhabi, as a doctor, controls his wife in the US, and the hijab is obligatory for her. Since the Wahhabis created a union of ethnicity and religion in Saudi Arabia, it flourished very well in Afghanistan, because the Afghan thinks that since he is an Arab and from the tribe of the Prophet (s), therefore his behavior is absolutely Islamic. Almost the majority of the followers of Sunnism follow the stupid methods of the Wahhabis, who married ethnicism with Sunnism, and do not believe in human freedom.
Half of Afghanistan's dear life was wasted on the stupid issue of Pashtunistan, and when I wrote that the issue of Pashtunistan had no practical aspect and should be forgotten, I was called a traitor.
The ethnic spirit has so popularized Arabic ethnic pre-Islamic words such as "dignity" and "honor" and mixed them into modern Islamic culture that if they don't like you, they call you "dishonorable" or a man without dignity.
I remember in my TV program I said in support of dance that this is a wonderful art, and if someone likes it, then he can dance, and if he doesn’t like it, then he can not dance. Someone called and asked if my daughter was dancing (he didn't know I didn't have children), and I said yes. I don't want to compromise anyone's freedom in the name of religion, and everyone is free to do what they want. He said you're dishonorable! I said I accept this dishonor, but not slavery.
In Afghanistan, people do not have equal civil rights. The marriage of ethnicism and religion has made women second-class people in society. The Shiite religion has always been condemned and the Hazaras have been cruelly exploited. And it is interesting that religious scholars, educated people, engineers, and doctors were all silent, which means they liked these crimes.
Why did I give up the Sunni religion? Because of her prejudices and narrow-mindedness toward other religions.
The identity of the people of Afghanistan has been completely compromised due to the illegal and forbidden marriage of the Pashtunwali and the Sunni religion, and we will be miserable until divorce takes place. Don't blame Pakistan or Iran or America or Russia. Look in your mirror and see how ethnicist you are. Are you free to say your wife's name in a meeting? If you can't, then you're an ethnicist. If you control your wife, you are an ethnicist. If you pronounce the word “university” not in Farsi, but in Pashto, the union of Ethniem and Sunnism has conquered you and cut you off from your cultural identity.
P.S. I must say that my wife's name is Favziyajan, I am a US citizen (since 1986), I am a representative of the Kabul culture and my native language is Farsi, not Dari.
