Afghanistan, known as the saddest country in the world, once again cannot celebrate Nowruz this year; because the Taliban consider it un-Islamic and have prohibited the celebration of this day. Alongside this obstruction, the shadow of Ramadan also looms heavy over Nowruz. From the perspective of Muslims, Ramadan is the “month of obedience and worship,” and during this month, instead of recreation and joy, one should be occupied with fasting and prayers, and refrain from anything that would displease fasting. However, if Nowruz weren’t in Ramadan this year, no one would have had permission to celebrate it; but with one difference, people could at least have gone out and freely enjoyed themselves under the pretext of this occasion. This year’s Ramadan has taken away even this possibility from the people. Thus, Nowruz in the new solar year has very little chance for an informal celebration. If we delve deeper into the matter, we still reach a similar conclusion. Suppose the Taliban allowed the celebration of this ancient festival to the people, then the situation would still be the same, albeit with slight differences.
Nowruz, more than being a beloved ancient tradition related to our civilization, is an opportunity for recreation, happiness, and entertainment at the beginning of a season where, as Khayyam says, “Every living soul desires a trip to the meadow.” However, the Taliban have deprived people of Nowruz in every aspect. When people are economically impoverished, politically oppressed, culturally restricted, and even deprived of the right to freely listen to music, what benefit can they derive from the coming and going of Nowruz?
In Afghanistan, under the Taliban’s rule, only members of this group and its associated clerics are truly joyful and intoxicated. The rest merely try to get through their days, and if an opportunity arises to leave the country, they will leave immediately. Hope has reached its lowest point, and the concept of life has no beauty or pleasure, not even the half-restricted enjoyment of the so-called republican era.
When you are not joyful and do not enjoy you are not living. If we call what is happening in Afghanistan under Taliban control “life,” we have insulted life. What this group has imposed on us is a version of life stripped of its essence, and replaced by a semblance of life. This could be called a semblance of life where people only play the roles assigned to them by the Taliban. In this kind of life, fear of death is always present. The main task of the Taliban’s political-ideological apparatus is to institutionalize as much fear as possible by perpetuating endless reproduction. A vast propaganda machine backed by a colossal economic-political infrastructure works tirelessly to keep fear alive in the people and, perhaps, even more so to promote and strengthen it. This propaganda machine has overlooked all realms of life and has cemented its presence even in the most private moments of people’s lives.
From families, religious schools, and universities to media outlets and social networks, you can see the pervasive and deadly presence of this propaganda machine that, with the resurgence of the Taliban, has gained unimaginable power and resources and is more than ever engaged in indoctrination and intimidation. The products of this vast apparatus for reproducing fear can even be found in a remote rural household. In this humble and strange household, if you cannot find anything else, you will surely find “views of death” from the favorite books of the clerics; books that the Taliban encourage people to read so that the fear of the catastrophic fate that awaits them in the Islamic promised world does not allow them peace of mind in this world. To attain that promised life, one must endure enough torment and agony in the “temporary world” to become the desired adherent of the Taliban, and thus, in that world, alongside houris and servants, have an “ideal life.”
One of the ways to achieve this life is through suicide, which the Taliban and other Islamists refer to as martyrdom operations. This group proudly declares that all its members are suicidal and ready to sacrifice themselves to reach their promised life.
The ideology of the Taliban is infused with death, fear, and terror. In this ideology, there is no room for joy in its usual and accepted sense. As long as you are alive, you must engage in jihad and worship, and this worship is incumbent even in the “joyful” moments of life, as every faithful Muslim’s life is intertwined with it. Joy is only permissible within the confines of the Sharia law approved by the Taliban, and beyond that, being joyful demands a heavy price that most people prefer to forego joy and submit to the Taliban’s dictates. This group creates a being out of you that cannot truly be joyful in any aspect of life. When you cannot live life according to your desires, and even your clothing style is dictated by the command to do good and forbid evil, and your time of joy and recreation is rationed by this institution, there is no such thing as freedom. When the element of freedom is removed from your life, joy also packs its bags.
With this explanation, we should enthusiastically celebrate Nowruz, as an ancient joyful tradition that symbolizes vitality and cheerfulness, even under the regime of the Taliban, which has become a regime hostile to life. This is something that our ancestors have done, and rightly so, because Nowruz, after centuries of cultural resistance, religious and non-religious, and the Islamization of life in our civilization (the birthplace of Nowruz), is still alive and people are interested in it. If it weren’t for the enduring resistance of our ancestors against cultural hostility, the traditional Nowruz would no longer exist, and you would only be able to read about it in the pages of history. Therefore, one of our main duties is to safeguard the ancient cultural values that are still alive but have not only been diminished by their enemies but have also been reproduced more over time and have gained more political power.
The Taliban group is one of these sworn enemies of our cultural values; a group that tries to Islamize everything and pass it through the sieve of its rigid and dogmatic narrative. Because Nowruz is not an Arab-Islamic tradition, it must be eliminated. In the Taliban’s ideological apparatus, any value or tradition that is deemed contrary to their rigid narrative is eliminated. The Taliban’s view of Nowruz is ethno-religious, while this tradition does not belong to any specific ethnicity or religion. Nowruz is a cultural tradition related to our civilization, and no ethnic group or nation has the right to claim ownership of it.