Religion in Afghanistan

The religion Zoroastrianism is believed by some to have originated in what is now Afghanistan between 1800 and 800 BCE, as its founder Zoroaster is thought to have lived and died in Balkh while the region at the time was referred to as Ariana.

By the middle of the 6th century BCE, the Achaemenids overthrew the Medes and incorporated Arachosia, Aria, and Bactria within its eastern boundaries.

Mainly concentrated in eastern and southern regions of present-day Afghanistan, early Indo-Aryan inhabitants (between 2000 and 1500 BCE) were adherents of Hinduism.

Notable among these inhabitant groups were the Gandharis and Kambojas,[12] while the Pashayi and Nuristanis are contemporary examples of these Indo-Aryan Vedic people.

[13][14][15][16][17] With a component of Vedic ancestors from the Pakthas, Pashtuns, the majority eastern Iranian ethnic group in Afghanistan, also widely practiced Hinduism and Buddhism.

In the 7th century, the Umayyad Arab Muslims entered into the area now known as Afghanistan after decisively defeating the Sassanians in the Battle of Nihawand (642 AD).

Following this colossal defeat, the last Sassanid Emperor, Yazdegerd III, became a hunted fugitive and fled eastward deep into Central Asia.

In pursuing Yazdegerd, the Arabs chose to enter the area from north-eastern Iran[21] and thereafter into Herat, where they stationed a large portion of their army before advancing toward the rest of Afghanistan.

Later, the Samanids propagated Islam deep into the heart of Central Asia, as the first complete translation of the Qur'an into Persian occurred in the 9th century.

Islamic leaders have entered the political sphere at various times of crisis, but rarely exercised secular authority for long.

[23] Until the 1890s, the country's Nuristan region was known as Kafiristan (land of the kafirs or "infidels") because of its inhabitants: the Nuristani, an ethnically distinctive people who practiced Animism and ancient Hinduism.

[25] The 1979 Soviet invasion in support of a communist government triggered a major intervention of religion into Afghan political conflict.

The Soviet-backed Marxist-style regime and the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) moved to reduce the influence of Islam.

For Afghans, Islam represents a potentially unifying symbolic system which offsets the divisiveness that frequently rises from the existence of a deep pride in tribal loyalties and an abounding sense of personal and family honor found in multitribal and multiethnic societies such as Afghanistan.

One of the most important revivalists and resuscitators of the Islamic Modernist and non-denominational Muslim movement in the contemporary era was Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani.

[45] A notable remnant of the Buddhist history in Afghanistan were the massive Buddhas of Bamiyan statues, carved in the 6th and 7th centuries.