ICC Note:

Afghanistan remains one of the world’s most religiously intolerant nations. According to Open Doors, Afghanistan ranks 4 on the World Watch List for Christian persecution. In 2010, the last public church was destroyed in Afghanistan, leaving no options for the country’s small Christian population. Despite this intense persecution, Christianity remains in Afghanistan, albeit underground. Will the world some day take notice of Afghan Christians and fight for their right to religious freedom? 

10/12/2016 Afghanistan (Christian Today) – Non-Muslims in Afghanistan continue to suffer violence and harassment and there are still no public places of Christian worship.

Just a few places of worship for Sikhs, Hindus, and Jews remain but the last public Christian church in Afghanistan was destroyed in March 2010, the report says.

Conversion from Islam to another religion is apostasy punishable by death for men and life imprisonment for women.

Hindus, Sikhs, Bahais, and Christians make up about 0.3 per cent of the 32.6 million population in Afghanistan. There is one Jewish person left in the entire country, according to the latest International Religious Freedom report from the US State Department. His name is Zablon Simintov. He is a businessman whose wife and two daughters live in Israel.

The report says individuals who convert from Islam continued to risk annulment of their marriages, rejection by their families and communities, loss of employment, and possibly the death penalty.

There were no reports of prosecutions for blasphemy or apostasy in 2015 but one person convicted of blasphemy in 2013 is still in prison serving a 20-year sentence.

Afghanistan is mainly Sunni Muslim and there are 3,224 registered madrassas and Koran learning centers with 340,000 students.

Members of the Bahai community reported continued legal discrimination against them, particularly on the question of marriages between Bahai women and Muslim men.

Killings and beheadings of minorities, including Shia Muslims, by extremists continued throughout the year. The Taliban warned mullahs not to perform funeral prayers for government security officials.

In March there was international outrage when a mob killed a woman named Farkhunda in Kabul following an allegation, later reported to be false, that she had burned pages of a Quran. In November a mob stoned a young woman named Rokhshana to death in Ghor, reportedly for attempting to elope with one man after a forced marriage to another.

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