‘Religious sentiments lead to massive violence in Afghanistan over Koran burning issue’
April 3rd, 2011 - 4:02 pm ICT by ANIKabul, Apr 3 (ANI): The Koran burning issue has created a massive protest leading to deaths of many in Afghanistan compared to the incident of US soldiers posing with dead Afghan civilians because “Afghans are highly tribal and religious and this religious sector always motivates things,” analysts have said.
Protests in response to a US pastor Terry Jones burning the Koran spread across Afghanistan for a second day on Saturday, killing at least nine people and injuring more than 70 in the southern city of Kandahar. On Friday, a demonstration in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif had turned violent when an angry mob stormed a United Nations compound killing seven members of the foreign staff and five Afghans.
According to one of the analysts, the disproportionate responses to the two incidents reveal Afghans’ increasingly complex attitude to the ongoing foreign presence in their country.
“The people of Afghanistan are very sensitive about Islamic principles. But … there was a lot of blood shed for three decades in Afghanistan. Also it has become common since 2001 that many civilians are killed during military operations,” The Christian Science Monitor quoted Baryalai Hakimi, the head of the law and political science department at the National Center for Policy Research in Kabul, as saying.
“The issue of killing civilians is serious, but not so serious as the Quran burning,” he added.
The photographs in Der Spiegel surfaced last month, just as members of the US Army who were accused murdering Afghan civilians in 2010, went on trial. In the graphic photos, soldiers were found posing with their victims like hunters showing off a trophy deer. One soldier was convicted last week, receiving a sentence of 24 years in exchange for agreeing to testify against other men in his unit.
Although this incident had stirred controversy, it remained confined to political circles and educated Afghans.
Walilullah Rahmani, Executive Director of the Kabul Center for Strategic Studies, believes that the recent Koran burning incident gained more prominence through the ‘word of mouth,’ and is readily understood by all Afghans.
“Afghans are religiously conservative people and most of our population, they are not even middle class. So the lower class level of Afghans are highly tribal and religious and this religious sector always motivates things,” Rahmani added. (ANI)
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