Religious minorities, women fear Afghanistan’s Taliban, other extremists | Crux Now

The 20-year American military presence in Afghanistan had hoped to bring stability and an end to its use as a terrorist sanctuary, but the tumultuous exit has laid open fears for the future, particularly for religious minorities and women, at the hands of the Taliban and other religious extremists. “The situation in Afghanistan is terrible for the minorities, because the Taliban want to impose a fusion of their local Pashtun traditions with their fundamentalist vision of Islamic Shariah law, not just on the country’s diverse ethnic groups, like Hazari Shiites, but also on women and children across the entire country,” Francesco Zannini, professor emeritus at Rome’s Pontifical Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies, told Catholic News Service.

Religious minorities, women fear Afghanistan’s Taliban, other extremists | Crux Now