Afghan Taliban Preacher At Taliban-Organized Conference: 'Anyone Who Stands Against Our Islamic Government Should Be Beheaded And Eliminated'

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At a conference of Islamic religious clerics organized by the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (the Taliban jihadi organization that seized power on August 15, 2021), Mawlawi Mujeeb Rahman Ansari, a 38-year-old preacher at a mosque in the northwestern province of Herat, called for the issuance of a fatwa authorizing the beheading of anyone who moves even slightly against the Taliban government.[1]

Speaking in Dari, Ansari said: "This security and this system have not been achieved easily. Anyone who makes a small movement against this system, the religious scholars are sitting, I am younger than them in age and knowledge; and all the scholars of Afghanistan should reach this conclusion and [issue a] fatwa that anyone who stands against our Islamic government should be beheaded and eliminated. Only the government is not responsible, the prominent scholars of the land are also responsible [for running the country]."

He added: "If the enemy lands on this soil again, betrayal takes place, and our security is ruined, then the blood of the martyrs will hold us responsible on the Day of Judgment. The martyrs will stand martyred on the Day of Judgment. The martyrs have gone. They have sacrificed themselves. We are left here sitting in cool air conditions under this roof. The power rests with us."

"We owe the blood of the martyrs. We are a nation that accepted martyrdom but did not accept prison. We are a nation that accepted martyrdom, not captivity. Now this day demands, when we go from here to our provinces, the same achievement that we have presented to the nation, now there is peace in the whole country, and we can travel all over the country," he said.

The Islamic religious clerics' conference was inaugurated by Mawlawi Mohammad Hassan Akhund, the prime minister of the Afghan Taliban government, on June 30, 2022, and a tribal elder and two Islamic clerics from each Afghan district, and a religious scholar and a tribal elder from each provincial headquarters attended.