260 No god but God
and compared to America’s founding fathers by President Ronald
Reagan, the combined force of the foreign Mujahadin fighters and the
Afghani and Pakistani religious students not only forced the Soviet
army to pull out of Afghanistan, they ushered in the collapse of the
Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War.
Their mission in Afghanistan accomplished, the triumphant
Mujahadin took their Pakistani training, their Saudi fundamentalism,
and their American weapons back to their home countries in order to
launch their own jihads in places like Palestine, Chechnya, Morocco,
and Indonesia. The Taliban returned to their homes in the Pashtun
regions near the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan to continue their
religious education. And Afghanistan, abandoned by a United States
flushed with victory in the Cold War, was left in the hands of lawless
warlords who ran the country like competing Mafia gangs—killing,
torturing, and raping indiscriminately in their quest for control.
In 1992, when the Taliban decided to reunite under the leadership
of their spiritual teacher, Mullah Omar, and retake Afghanistan, this
time from the hands of the feuding warlords, they were again sup-
ported by the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan. With the
assistance of Pakistan’s ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence agency), the
Taliban secured their home region of Kandahar in 1993. Two years
later, they captured the Shi‘ite city of Herat, and by 1996 they con-
trolled the capital city of Kabul. With more than three fourths of
the country under their control, they then began a now infamous
Wahhabization process throughout Afghanistan in which all religious
sites—Muslim and non-Muslim—were destroyed, tobacco and coffee
outlawed, men compelled to grow beards, women forced into seclusion,
and the country’s substantial Shi‘ite and Sufi populations massacred.
Considering how often Islam has been used to rationalize the brutal
policies of oppressive totalitarian régimes like the Taliban in
Afghanistan, the Wahhabists in Saudi Arabia, or the Faqih in Iran, it is
hardly surprising that the term “Islamic democracy” provokes such
skepticism in the West. Some of the most celebrated academics in the
United States and Europe reject the notion outright, believing that
the principles of democracy cannot be reconciled with fundamental
Islamic values. When politicians speak of bringing democracy to the