Since the Taliban seizure of power in August 2021 it has become extremely difficult to obtain accurate information about several thousand Afghan Christians still inside Afghanistan who risk execution of discovered. Early reports suggest they had switched off phones and were regularly moving from house to house. The Taliban have also sought to tightly control information, closing down Afghan media which were either critical of the government or for news content perceived to conflict with Islamic values.[1] In August 2024 they refused to allow the UN Human Rights Council’s Special Rapporteur to visit the country claiming he was guilty of “spreading propaganda.[2]

Despite earlier public promises to the west, the Taliban have implemented a brutal regime which largely mirrors the situation when they were previously in power (1996-2001). In addition, Al-Qaeda now work closely with the Taliban government and have now re-established training camps in the country, while Islamic State-Khorasan Province (IS-KP) carries out terrorist attacks against both government and civilians and particularly targets those it considers ‘apostates’ from Islam.[3]

No church buildings are allowed and all Christians are secret believers.

Even during the twentyyear period which followed the 2001 overthrow of the Taliban, Afghan Christians were arrested and placed on trial for apostasy, facing a possible death sentence.[4] 

The death penalty for apostasy set out in both the Hanafi (Sunni) and Ja’fari (Shi’a) jurisprudence provides a degree of legitimisation for honour killings of Christian converts from Islam which are conducted by members of their immediate family or wider community.

The Afghan church has never been recognised by any recent Afghan government or society in general. Consequently, all Afghan Christians are assumed to be converts from Islam and therefore deserving of the shari’a penalty for apostasy, - even though many are second, third or even fourth generation Christians. 

As such Afghan Christians under the Taliban are in a more vulnerable position than historic Christian communities faced in areas under the control of Islamic State in Iraq/Syria, as they will not be offered Dhimmi status, just forced conversion to Islam or death.

The lack of any government recognition also means Afghan Christians are in an even more vulnerable position than the small Hindu and Sikh Community, who despite having been over 200,000 strong in the 1990s and represented in the Afghan parliament since 2016, now look likely to cease to exist. When the Taliban seized power in 1996-2001 they forced them to wear yellow badges reminiscent of those the Nazis forced on the Jews. Remaining Hindus and Sikhs began to flee Afghanistan after a 2018 meeting between their leaders and President Ashraf Ghani was bombed by Islamic State’s Khorassan Province. It was estimated only 140 remained by the end of 2021.[5]  Afghanistan’s Jewish population estimated to have numbered 40,000 in the late nineteenth century has also now ceased to exist, with the last remaining Jew fleeing when the Taliban seized power, leaving the country’s Jewish synagogue abandoned.[6]

The Taliban have reinstituted the police state they enforced when previously in power. The religious police (officially the Department for the Suppression of Vice and Promotion of Virtue) force men to pray and enforce strict sharia on the streets and conduct house to house searches and vehicle checks. In 2022 the UN stated they have verified well over a hundred extra judicial killings of those linked to the former regime, which ranged from senior officials to drivers.[7]

There are reports of arrests of Afghan Christians by the Taliban and some suggestions of extra judicial killings and abductions of Christian women with threats made against families if they speak out, although by their nature these are almost impossible to verify. 

Pakistan is no longer a safe place for Afghan Christians. Whilst many fled there when the Taliban were in power 1996-2001, the emergence of the Pakistani Taliban (Tehrek-i-Taliban-i-Pakistan), which was inspired by the Afghan Taliban, means it is no longer a safe country for Afghan Christians. The 2013 suicide bombing of All Saints Church, Peshawar, just over the border in Pakistan, which killed 127 and injured hundreds of others illustrates how the security situation there has changed even for Pakistani Christians. In late 2023 the Pakistan government ordered up to 1.7 million unregistered Afghan refugees to return to Afghanistan and began making arrests. This placed Afghan Christian refugees in the position of forced deportation to a country where they faced execution for apostasy.[8]

Legal situation

S.1 of the Afghan Penal Code stated that it dealt ONLY with ta’zir offences, while those committing hudud offences (i.e. those for which the Qur’an and Hadith stipulate a specific penalty such as apostasy) are to be punished under shari’a of the Hanafi school. As such, apostasy carried the death sentence even before the Taliban came to power.

The Hanafi school of shari’a stipulates that any adult male who leaves Islam is to be executed, an adult female is to be imprisoned until she repents and returns to Islam, while a child is to be imprisoned with the adult penalty applied when they become of age. As such, even before the Taliban came to power, conversion to Christianity carried the death penalty.

Although Afghanistan was a signatory to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) in practice, even before the Taliban seized power in 2021 international human rights conventions were interpreted as being subject what shari’a permits. For example, s.5 of the 2007 Mass Media law stated that it aims “Observe the right to freedom of speech and mass media as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights observing the provisions of the principals of the sacred religion of Islam.” It then specifically prohibited publication of any “subjects that were contrary to principles of Islam” (s.45.1) and required national radio and TV to adjust its programmes accordingly (s.15). It also prohibits publication or dissemination of any religion other than Islam (s.45.6).[19] The latter was a significantly regressive move, as shortly after the Taliban were ousted in 2001, the Jesus film was shown on national TV and repeated by popular demand. However, the new Taliban law on the propagation of virtue and prevention of vice issued in August 2024 effectively bans any media other than Islamic ones as well as banning all cultural activities, other than Islamic ones, which even includes banning Nao Ruz – Persian new year which for centuries has been widely celebrated in Afghanistan.

Ideologies linked to persecution

Taliban ideology. The actions of the Taliban are predictable to a significant extent because they are primarily based on a combination of Hanafi Sunni Islam of the Deobandi school as it has been interpreted in Pushtun culture and Pushtunwali (see below)

Salafism Which seeks to create a society which closely follows the example of the first three generations of Muslims known as “the pious predecessors” (al-Salaf as-sālih). Islamic State Khorassan Province is influenced by Salafist ideology. It uses an Islamic device known as takfir to declare anyone who does not share what it claims is its “pure” form of Islam, an apostate and therefore a legitimate object of jihad. IS-KP has therefore particularly targeted the Hazara Shi’a community.[20] However, as many Afghan Christians are from the Hazara community they have a double vulnerability.

The Shari’a of Classical Islam. Both the Hanafi and Jafari shari’a not only require hudud penalties for apostasy, but additionally state that the blood of an apostate is mobah (free for anyone to take) and anyone taking their life should not be punished. Both also state that the marriage of an apostate is automatically dissolved if their husband/wife remains a Muslim.

Pustunwali (the Pushtun tribal code). At certain points Pushtunwali is severer than Hanafi shari’a, as anything deemed to threaten tribal or family honour leads to killing.

Jihadist Islamism. There are range of other jihadist groups such as Hezb-i-Islami which predate the Taliban and have killed Afghan Christians.

Future risk

As the Afghan church has never been recognised by any recent Afghan government, all Afghan Christians, even if second or third generation Christians are deemed to be apostates from Islam, for which the shari’a penalty is execution for men and perpetual imprisonment for women. Because of this the greatest risk to Afghan Christians has always been extra judicial killings, either so called “honour killings” by family members, or by agents of the state such as the Muhtaseeb.

The extreme difficulty of obtaining any accurate information from within Afghanistan means that it is unclear whether Afghan Christians have faced judicial executions. However, in July 2024 a UN report cited a senior Taliban official responsible for prisons as having stated that there were then up to 600 prisoners in Afghan prisons who had been sentenced to death.[21] As such, the Lindisfarne Centre judges there to be a significant risk that Afghan Christians will in the near future face judicial execution for their faith.

There is therefore a very significant threat to life and the future of the entire Christian population which would constitute crimes against humanity and may potentially cross the threshold of some aspects of the 1948 Genocide Convention. In particular, section 2a) “killing members of the group”; 2b “causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group”; and 2c) (“deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”.[22]

Church History

The Afghan Church existed from the early centuries of Christianity. There is a long-established tradition that the Apostle Thomas travelled through this region to preach the Gospel, ending up in southern India. The reference by Bardaisan of Edessa in 196 AD to Christians among the Kushans who at the time ruled most of Afghanistan and northern Pakistan, suggests that Christianity was established in what is now Afghanistan by the second century AD:

“and what shall we say of the new race of us Christians, who Christ at his coming planted in every country and in every region…The brethren…who are in Parthia do not take two wives..nor do our sisters who are among the Gilanians and the Kaishans (Kushans) consort with strangers; nor do those brethren who are in Persia marry their daughters…”[23]

The archaeological discovery of an apparently Christian cross in 1935 near Taxilla is also consistent with the existence of a Christian presence in the second century.[24] The city of Herat in western Afghanistan had its own bishop by 424 AD. Despite Christians across the Sasanian empire experiencing Zoroastrian persecution under Sharpur 11 after 337 AD, evangelism from Herat resulted in five more bishoprics being created in Afghanistan by 544. By the time the Islamic armies invaded in the seventh century Herat was a metropolitan see (archbishopric) overseeing 8 bishoprics across Central Asia.[25] Even today, we can see evidence of Afghanistan’s Christian past, a whole district around Herat is still known as Injil (Gospel) and the Nestorian cross is part of the traditional design of many Afghan carpets. A small Armenian Christian community existed from the seventeenth century and Afzal Khan, Amir of Kabul (1866-67) married an Armenian Christian wife.[26] However, towards the end of the nineteenth century their church was destroyed and the community appears to have been extinguished. An ancient Jewish community also existed in Afghanistan from the time of the Babylonian exile (597 BC), but largely ceased to exist at the time of the first seizure of power by the Taliban (1996-2001).

The origins of the modern Afghan church began with the preaching tours of Dr Joseph Wolff (1795-1862), the son of Bavarian rabbi, who converted to Christianity and preached across Afghanistan in Persian between 1831-34 and received an audience with Amir Dost Mohammed.[27]  The growth of an Afghan church over the border in Peshawar led to the growth of an Afghan church and a number of Afghan Christians crossed back into Afghanistan to preach. The main growth of the Afghan church has been since the 1970s and in 1995 particularly since the first Taliban seizure of power (1996-2001). A number of estimates published over the last 20 years suggest that there may then have been around 10,000 Afghan Christians,[28] although it must be acknowledged that all estimates are based on intelligent reasoning, rather than any actual census data.

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Lindisfarne Centre articles