Hindu Jews

Half a world away, a struggle of great import to the Jewish people rages. I’m not referring to Israel, but Afghanistan.

Two weeks ago, the Taliban, Afghanistan’s Islamic rulers, decreed that all non-Muslims must wear distinctive marks on their clothing to set them apart from the country’s Muslim majority. The decree, which still has to be approved by the supreme Taliban leader, would primarily affect the hundreds or thousands of Hindus living among the Sunni Muslim majority.

History tells us that such acts cannot be explained away except by willful forgetting. From the time Pope Innocent III at the Lateran Council of 1215 obliged Jews to wear specially marked clothing, such regulations have invariably been precursors to expulsion or extermination. The yellow patch of 1215 became the yellow star of 1933 and beyond. As Germany conquered Europe, the star was as much a part of the blitzkreig as the panzer. Shortly after German troops occupied Paris, the 100,000 Jews living there were given yellow star armbands to wear. Then came deportation.

In Afghanistan, the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice explained that the markings were for the protection of the Hindu minority. “Hindus should not look like Muslims, for their own protection, so that they are not bothered by the religious police,” a Taliban spokesman told The Washington Post.

The echoes of a 1933 German poster urging Jews to “Wear It With Pride, The Yellow Badge!” resonate in such Orwellianisms.

Since taking control of most of Afghanistan in the mid-1990s, the Taliban have instituted their version of strict Islamic law. Patrols roam city streets making sure Muslim women are wearing the head-to-toe burka and that Muslim men are diligently attending the rituals of prayer. The Taliban have also destroyed non-Muslim religious art and executed political adversaries. They have given Osama bin Laden free rein to plan bombings and assassinations, closed girls’ schools, banned women from the workplace (at one time, 40 percent of Afghan doctors were female) and banned movies, television, videos, music and dance.

There is great danger in treating what’s happening there as the travails of a distant people in a faraway land, as say, Washingtonians must have looked upon reports of roundups in Polish shtetls. Fortunately, this time the State Department has strongly denounced the order. Though at first U.S. officials might have seen the Taliban as a countervailing force to Shiite Iran, now they see the movement as a geopolitical threat. Should Taliban revolutionary morality make inroads in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Bosnia, writes Ahmed Rashid in “Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia” (Yale University Press), the fear of an Iranian-led revolutionary Islam will be as nothing compared to the prospect of a Taliban-led Islamic tidal wave.

To their credit, some national Jewish organizations almost instantly joined with Hindu groups and other human rights organizations in protesting the decree. “History has shown that it’s a slippery slope from discrimination and exclusion to terror and violence,” said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) called on the international community and all religious leaders to immediately speak out against this practice, communicating its concerns to Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations. “The Taliban rulers in Afghanistan have adopted a policy that more than 60 years ago spelled the beginning of the end for 6 million Jews,” said ADL Executive Director Abe Foxman.

“There can be no excuse for silence,” said Leonard Cole, chairman of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. “The pressure of the international community must be brought to bear on the Taliban rulers.”

There are human rights abuses throughout the world, no doubt. Afghanistan is at the mercy of local and geopolitical powers far beyond our reach. There are perhaps 1,000 Hindus in Afghanistan, not 6 million.

But in the end, there are no excuses we can give for inaction that the world didn’t offer six decades ago. The predicate of “Never Forget” isn’t “What Happened to Us” but “What Must Never Happen to Anyone.”

To make your voice heard, contact Secretary of State Colin Powell atsecretary@state.gov, or Secretary of State, U.S. Department of State, Washington, D.C. 20520. Fax: (202) 261-8577.