Pre-2001 Taliban Religious Ideology – Context, Roots and Manifestations

Abstract

This paper critically re-examines some of the prevailing narratives about the religious ideology of the early Taliban and analyses the four most common conventional concepts of it: being an oversimplified version of Islam, being born in madrasas located in Pakistan, being a local variation of Deobandism and being a Pashtun nationalist movement. The author argues that the ideology of pre-2001 Taliban is a non-static, multilayered and oversimplified interpretation of religious dogmas mixed with local tribal customs and definitely more rural fundamentalism than political Islamism. In the first section, the author provides basic definitions, such as ideology and Deobandism. The second section is a presentation of the religious context of Afghanistan and roots of the Taliban. The next section is an analysis of the Deobandi influence over Taliban religious life followed by a paragraph about Pashtunism and the Pashtunwali role in Taliban’s ideology. The next paragraph concerns the practical dimension and implementation of religious rules on the policy of Afghanistan during the first emirate.