Islam and the Soviets in Afghanistan

Prepared for the Symposium on Soviet Options in Afghanistan, U.S. Department of State, February 1980. From page 1: "Like most people here and elsewhere, I have been trying to understand the recent events in the Muslim world in general and in Afghanistan and Iran in particular. These are not, as many think, anomalies of events brought about by a single person such as Imam Khomeini. These events are reactions against oppression, injustice, and humiliation of the Muslim people from the Maghrib to Mindanao. This last sentence is paraphrased from a line by the late Lloyd Fallers in his essay in Clifford Geertz's book Old Societies and New States. Fallers was writing, then about the late 19th century and early 20th century movements among the Muslim people such as the Pan Islamic movement of Jamaluddin Afghani and Mohammed Aubduh, the Mushruta group in Iran headed by persons like llalik Al-llutakllamin and Tabatabai, and the Jadidists like Ismail Ghasperali among the Tatars of the Crimea, and Abduruf Fitrat, Bihbudi and others in West Turkestan. Contemporary '0rientalists' in both the USSR and the West have called the leadership of these movements deviant and the movements themselves pathological and anomalous to the expected behavior. The early 20th century Orientalists' perceptions of men and events as anomalies served to legitimize the destruction of these people and their movements at the hands of the authorities in the Middle East and Turkestan. As a result, a great many Muslim intellectuals perished in the colonialists' dungeons."This material from the personal archives of Professor M. Mobin Shorish is made available by the University of Arizona Libraries as part of the Afghanistan Digital Collections. Email repository@u.library.arizona.edu with your questions about this collection