"The extremists are afraid of books and pens. The power of education frightens them. They are afraid of women. The power of the voice of women frightens them." - Malala fighting Taliban.
this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2025
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The Taliban didn't start as a resistance movement fighting invaders. It was a faction from the Afghan civil war, and fought against other Afghan factions like the Northern Alliance.
So it is an extremist religious faction that fought for influence against more moderate groups. And the 'religious' foundations and messaging makes it a relevant comparison to make. Especially since the playbook used by American Christian nationalists shares many similarities with that of other extremist religious groups, including Islamic groups like the Taliban
Yeah, but again this brings a conversation about this at least in a US context back to a discussion about the US Civil War where people were actually factionalized into fighting each other in big groups with guns. This is not an environment US Christian Nationalism has been in for a very long time, if ever (both sides of the US Civil War were arguably Christian Nationalist I would think..), and I think it makes it a much different conversation than somewhere like Afghanistan where there is a long geopolitical history of empires invading, leveraging local power struggles, and occupying by imposing force on local populations.
shrugs again though, I agree with the spirit of what is being said here, Christian Nationalism is terrifying, I am just trying to underline that one of the things about it that is so terrifying is that extremist Christian Nationalism needs no actual realistic foreign threat or occupier to justify its violence, it just makes it up whole cloth and its followers eat it right up no critical questions asked.
It seems like your familiarity with the Taliban is based around their actions post US imperialist action. They were originally formed to combat the spread of corruption in Afghanistan, and were based on Pashtun nationalism and religious fundamentalism. They did significantly more than just carry out military action.
I'm not saying there are no differences, but I do think it is worthwhile to examine the similarities. And only looking at what the Taliban did in response to invasion ignores a large portion of their history, and largely misses the beliefs and goals of the founders.