Afghanistan under the Taliban does not acknowledge that any citizen of the country is Christian at all. Most of the Christians in Afghanistan therefore keep their faith secret. Conversion from Islam to Christianity is illegal.
Please pray that the hearts of this strife-torn country’s leaders would be turned toward the light, and that Holy Orthodoxy would ultimately come to Afghanistan.
For previous ChristianPersecution.com coverage of the persecution of Christians in Afghanistan, see here.
“Christians in Afghanistan Still at Risk of Death for Apostasy,” Barnabas Fund, April 26, 2022:
The annual report of the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), released on April 25, has argued that Christians in Afghanistan are still at risk.
Since the August 2021 U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the subsequent Taliban takeover, the threat to Christians – all considered apostates (murtadd) from Islam – and other religious minorities has increased.
USCIRF has recommended that the U.S. Government designate Afghanistan a “Country of Particular Concern.”
“Christian converts,” says the 2022 USCIRF report, are among those who “practice their faith in hiding due to fear of reprisal and threats from the Taliban and separately from the Islamic State-Khorasan Province (ISIS-K).”
The report recounts that the Taliban have gone door-to-door searching for Christians.
“Christians have received threatening phone calls,” states the report, “and one leader of a house church network received a threatening letter in August from Taliban militants. Some Christians have turned off their phones and moved to undisclosed locations.”
Taliban rule also places believers at greater risk of violence and death at the hands of their neighbors, including even friends and family.
Since mid-2021 the Taliban have said that Christians must leave, re-convert to Islam, or face death….
In the report, USCIRF calls upon the U.S. Government to expand its Refugee Admissions Program to specifically include “Afghan religious minorities at extreme risk of religious persecution.”
