This Muslim country imposes restrictions on HINDUS, forces minorities to dress like…, Sikhs asked to…

The Tabiban has imposed a slew of restrictions on the Hindu and sikh families, including on their appearances, and have been banned from marking their religious holidays in public.

From which Muslim country did the burqa come? Where is there a fine for wearing it? Now this country has banned it

New Delhi: Since the Taliban took power in Afghanistan in 2021, minorities in the country have lived in constant fear. Two years later, those fears are becoming reality. Afghanistan’s last-known Jew fled shortly after the Taliban takeover, while the Sikh and Hindu communities have dwindled to just a few remaining families. The Tabiban has imposed a slew of restrictions on the Hindu and sikh families, including on their appearances, and have been banned from marking their religious holidays in public.

Fari Kaur, one of the last remaining Sikhs in the capital, Kabul, while speaking to RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi said, “I cannot go anywhere freely.” “When I go out, I’m forced to dress like a Muslim so that I can’t be identified as a Sikh,” she said, in reference to the Taliban’s order that all women must wear the all-encompassing burqa or niqab.

Kaur’s father was killed in a suicide attack targeting Sikhs and Hindus in the eastern city of Jalalabad in 2018. The attack reportedly led as many as 1,500 Sikhs to leave the country, including Kaur’s mother and sisters.

25 worshipers were killed in March 2020 when Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K) militants moved inside a Sikh temple in Kabul. After the attack, most of the remaining members of the minority left Afghanistan. But Kaur refused to leave. But now, more than two years after the Taliban seized power, she said the lack of religious freedom under the militants has left her no choice but to seek refuge abroad.

Add India.com as a Preferred Source

“We have not celebrated our key festivals since the Taliban returned to power,” she said. “We have very few community members left behind in Afghanistan. We cannot even look after our temples.”

It is important to note that many of the Afghan Sikhs and Hindus who have left the country have moved to India, where most face a life of poverty. “We abandoned our country out of extreme desperation,” said Chabul Singh, a 57-year-old Sikh man who left Afghanistan with his wife and two sons several years ago.

“In Afghanistan, our distinctive turbans gave us away, and we were killed both by the Taliban and Daesh,” he told Radio Azadi, referring to IS-K by its Arabic acronym. Sikhs often wrap their hair, which they are not supposed to cut, in a turban.

Despite his family’s struggles in India, Singh said returning to Afghanistan is not an option.

“In Afghanistan, our Muslim brothers often asked us, ‘Why have you come from India?'” he said. “But here in India, they ask us, ‘Why don’t you go back to Afghanistan?'”