As an Ismaili born and raised in Badakhshan, discrimination was not an episode in my life but its texture. Before university, the insults came only occasionally — an arrogant glance in the bazaar, a whispered slur in the village. Our Sunni neighbours always considered themselves a step above us, and why wouldn’t they? For decades, their places were protected by both written and unwritten state laws, which were aligned with Hanafi jurisprudence.
Ismailis, as a community accustomed to surviving injustice, learned the rules of silence: Do not utter certain words, do not mention your sect in public, and do not voice forbidden beliefs. I was eight when my father taught me never to speak of my identity at school. Even when children my age hurled insults, I kept silent, terrified that my honesty could cost my father his freedom. He warned me: “I don’t want to hear you mention Ismaili and Sunni at school.” Those words became part of me. Even now, I respect his advice and the lesson he passed on for peaceful coexistence in an unequal world.
The weight of being asked to explain yourself
At university, the questions came quickly. “Aren’t you Tajik?” “Then why do you pray differently?” Within a week, I was forced to explain my identity as an Ismaili Tajik from Badakhshan. My roommate tried to accept it, but the discomfort was clear.
After a full year of trust and laughter, another friend reacted instinctively when she learned I was Ismaili: “Astaghfirullah! Don’t say that. You’re such a good, righteous, Muslim girl.” I laughed, unsure whether to feel flattered or insulted.
To those shaped by madrasa indoctrination, “Ismaili” is synonymous with heretic, infidel and someone of lesser moral worth. This narrative is centuries old and extends from Abdur Rahman Khan to the mujahedeen era. We have endured the taunts and the prejudice though no one who believes in human equality ever fully accepts such treatment as normal.
Whether we wanted to or not, we were always expected to explain ourselves, to justify our beliefs, to speak on behalf of an entire sect. Meanwhile, others walked freely without ever having to account for who they were.
Despite its shortcomings, the republic gave us legal equality. I relied on a constitution that guaranteed freedom of religion. For the first time, I could speak openly, study freely, work without fear, and build relationships that transcended sectarian lines.
That freedom is now gone.
Questions raised by the Taliban’s new initiative
We now face a new Taliban directive, which is an incentive plan for those who convert to the Hanafi sect. It forces a discussion of some fundamental questions:
· Why should anyone convert?
· What purpose does this serve?
· What message hides behind this decree?
· Are those who “voluntarily” convert safe from persecution?
Over the last four years, Badakhshan has witnessed horrific and mysterious killings. None have been investigated. The victims were often Ismaili religious figures, social workers, or educated community members. Given the Taliban’s suffocating surveillance, how is it that no culprit or motive has ever been identified?
This directive is the answer the victims’ families have been searching for. Officially, the Taliban calls members ofall sects to be their “brothers.” In practice, their message to us is simple: “Be grateful you are alive.”
This decree is the final nail in the coffin of an equal Ismaili presence in Afghanistan. Its unwritten message is unmistakable: If you do not convert, consider your survival a privilege.
The directive promises financial incentives to families and youth who convert to Sunnism. These words carry several meanings:
1. A mockery of a 1.5 million-strong faith: The Taliban ask, “How much will you sell your belief for?” They do not understand that Ismaili faith is rooted in a spiritual tradition that their money cannot touch.
2. A trap built on poverty: They deepen destitution, then use it to pressure families to abandon their creed. The bitter irony is that, upon conversion, an Ismaili is made to recite the shahada, as though they were never Muslim before. Eyewitnesses say converts are symbolically wrapped in a shroud — as if dying and being reborn — before repeating the declaration.
3. Indoctrination through Taliban-run schools: Teachers tasked with “illuminating minds” are being deployed to Ismaili-majority schools.
To “illuminate the mind,” apparently, means replacing an Ismaili’s thoughtful, reasoned belief in God, the Prophet, the Qur’an, and the Imamate with the ideology of madrasa-trained Taliban clerics. It is painful. It is absurd.
4. Turning jamatkhanas into mosques: Every jamatkhana is to be converted into a mosque unless there are no Sunnis living in the area. Just days ago, a jamatkhana built by 70 families with their own hands was shut down in Badakhshan.
Belonging or struggling to survive
Every line of the Taliban’s directive exposes the fractures tearing Afghanistan apart. As a young Ismaili woman, should I fear the humiliation of my gender, the targeted killings of my community, or the erasure of my Persian language?
What this regime assigns to me is a place so degrading that it forces a painful realization:
I no longer belong in today’s Afghanistan. Survival may require leaving it.
I am a Tajik from Badakhshan. I consider this soil the resting place of my ancestors’ bones. Yet today, in my own homeland, I am isolated and targeted. It is an experience reminiscent of the darkest chapters of human history for a member of a minority community.
Breaking Badakhshan’s social fabric
In Badakhshan, ethnicity and language are intertwined. Sometimes families often have both Sunni and Ismaili children. The Taliban have torn families apart. I witnessed a mixed-sect couple — an Ismaili man and a Sunni woman — forced toward divorce by emotional manipulation and intimidation. They eventually reunited, but the message was clear. Inter-sect marriages, which were once growing in number, now seem impossible.
In Friday sermons, clerics preach: “Cut ties with Ismailis. Do not greet them. Do not speak to them.”
In school, children are told: “Do not eat food cooked by Ismailis; their slaughter is not halal.”
Such rhetoric might not sway the informed, but the long-term impact of this “Talibanization” will be profound in communities where Taliban-run madrasas are the only source of knowledge.
My final thoughts
This directive makes one truth unmistakable: There is no room for us in the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate. As a young Ismaili watching this regime strip away our beliefs, my brother’s right to work, and my right to justice, I see no future for myself here.
To young Ismailis and Sunnis alike, I urge you not to surrender to ignorance. Seek knowledge. Live with mutual respect. Do not let bigotry seize your humanity or your family bonds.
And to my fellow Ismailis, I say: Our community has survived eras darker than this. This too shall pass. Once more we will take solace in the verse of Pir Nasir Khusraw:
“Even if the whole world pelts me with stones in cruelty,
I will never let go of the hem of certainty.”
Gardafarid Roshan-del is a pseudonym for a female Ismaili writer living in Afghanistan.
