I have read that the Taliban banned or outlawed tv or television and computers is this true I just want the context as to why this was done because my understanding is that Muslims have invented things therefor Islam is not saying we must live in the 7th centruy is this correct or right I also respect and admire Anjem Choudary is the context that Afghanistan is tribal and made up of tribes and feared
western influence with the use of technology ?
Taliban slowly adopting modern technology Written by Scott Taylor Sunday, 24 June 2007 19:00 0diggsdigg
LAST TUESDAY, the Taliban made public a videotape of what was reportedly a graduation ceremony for a new class of suicide bombers. The footage showed a couple of dozen masked "graduates" wearing black turbans and waving little white flags.
Addressing the graduating class of '07 was Mansoor Dadullah, the brother of recently slain Taliban military commander Mullah Dadullah. Brandishing a Kalashnikov assault rifle, Principal Mansoor urged the would-be suicide bombers to spread terror outside of Afghanistan and to target western countries, including Canada.
It was last year at about this same time that the Taliban issued a similar statement claiming they had trained some 300 suicide bombers who were prepared to wreak havoc on the foreign coalition troops occupying Afghanistan. What made this year's annual graduation ceremony more newsworthy was that the Taliban seemed to have discovered the magical magnetic power of video to the western media. Not to be confused with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network, the Taliban is a religious movement that preaches an extreme version of Islam. Until now, the senior Taliban mullahs have shunned modern inventions and technology, believing such progress to be inspired by evil. According to Kathy Gannon, the author of the bestseller I is for Islam, at the time of the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan in 2001, the Taliban possessed only one computer in Kandahar. Apparently it sat unopened in its packaging in the office of Taliban founder Mullah Omar because he was afraid to open it. In another anecdote related by a diplomat who met with Taliban officials in Kabul, the mullahs were afraid to sit down to dinner. They thought that the tables and chairs were western-inspired comforts and therefore to be avoided.
It seems that someone in the Taliban organization, perhaps with the assistance of their worldlier al-Qaida allies, has twigged to the importance of television images in spreading fear via the western media. It doesn't have to be a logical threat; it just has to look menacing, and mentioning countries by name as specific targets guarantees coverage. I mean, let's get real for a minute - a graduation ceremony from suicide bomber school? What sort of courses do they teach and to whom do they submit their diplomas? Do they start off using small amounts of explosives and just blow off a limb or write a detailed thesis on the merits of electric detonators versus toggle igniters?
Another message conveyed by Principal Mansoor in his graduation address was that some of these "pupils" were in fact foreign students who had come from western countries (like Canada) to take this training in Afghanistan. If this statement is true, then we can all breath a sigh of relief knowing the Taliban is attracting morons into their ranks. If indeed an Islamic extremist was residing in a western country plotting mischief, travelling to the Kandahar region would certainly red-flag them to every intelligence agency involved in the war against terrorism.
What made the copycat homegrown terror attacks in London and Madrid successful was that the perpetrators were already in location. It was Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day who quickly pointed out the obvious fact that the graduates of the Kandahar suicide bomber school would still have to negotiate the elaborate security measures already in place before they could ever carry out an attack on Canadian soil.
Such international travel requires visas and passports and the battery of X-ray machines and security checks at a multitude of airports before they could ever get to Canada.
However, if Canadians were left with the impression that dozens of masked suicide bombers are heading our way in droves, they can be forgiven. That was the Taliban's intention, and our media obligingly helped them achieve their goal.
http://www.espritdecorps.ca/index.p...ern-technology&catid=40:afghanistan&Itemid=83
Overview
The Taliban initially enjoyed goodwill from Afghans weary of the warlords' corruption, brutality, and incessant fighting.
[108] However, this popularity was not universal, particularly among non-Pashtuns.
The Taliban's extremely strict and
anti-modern ideology has been described as an "innovative form of
sharia combining Pashtun tribal codes,"
[109] or
Pashtunwali, with radical
Deobandi interpretations of Islam favored by JUI and its splinter groups. Also contributing to the mix was the
jihadism and
pan-Islamism of Osama bin Laden.
[110] Their ideology was a departure from the
Islamism of the anti-Soviet mujahideen rulers they replaced who tended to be mystical
Sufis, traditionalists, or radical Islamicists inspired by the
Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan).
[111]
Under the Taliban regime,
Sharia law was interpreted to forbid a wide variety of previously lawful activities in Afghanistan. One Taliban list of prohibitions included: pork, pig, pig oil, anything made from human hair, satellite dishes, cinematography, and equipment that produces the joy of music, pool tables, chess, masks, alcohol, tapes, computers, VCRs, television, anything that propagates sex and is full of music, wine, lobster, nail polish, firecrackers, statues, sewing catalogs, pictures, Christmas cards.
[112] They also got rid of employment, education, and sports for all women, dancing, clapping during sports events, kite flying, and characterizations of living things, no matter if they were drawings, paintings, photographs, stuffed animals, or dolls. Men had to have a fist size beard at the bottom of their chin. Conversely, they had to wear their head hair short. Men had to wear a head covering.
[113]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban
Word for Word/www.taliban.com; Allah Is Good. Technology Is Bad. Visit Our Web Site.
By JOE SHARKEY
Published: October 25, 1998
THE Taliban hard-liners who rule most of Afghanistan are arguably the world's most vociferous enemies of modern technology. When they aren't busy enforcing the rules that prohibit females from leaving their homes unveiled or unaccompanied by a close male relative, the Taliban religious police roam neighborhoods searching for radios, TV's, VCR's, phonographs, satellite dishes or computers, which are promptly destroyed while the owners are arrested.
What a surprise, then, to go on line, type in ''www.taliban.com'' and witness what spills forth: Taliban Online, a profusion of graphics and text (in awkward English) employing the most modern communications tool -- the Internet -- to extol the virtues and triumphs of the least modern of regimes. Here are excerpts from the site, which appears to originate in Pakistan and is evidently designed for external use only. JOE SHARKEY
Among Taliban Online features are news summaries from the pages of the unofficial Taliban weekly newspaper, Dharb-i-Mumin, which chronicles efforts to enforce sharia, or Islamic law, in Afghanistan. Some recent items:
Drive of Kandahar Police Against Antisocial Elements: The Kandahar police, in a drive against antisocial elements yesterday, rounded up different criminals from around the city. They arrested a man and seized . . . 240 song cassettes and packs of playing cards from his possessions. All the things were then set on fire while the culprit was handed over to the police. Oct. 4
Televisions Seized and Smashed in Kabul: [The religious police] have started their country-wide campaign of destroying televisions, VCR's, satellite dishes, etc. . . . On Tuesday, here in Kabul, hundreds of television sets and other instruments of immoral pastimes were seized from markets and work places and then destroyed. These means of corruption were, in some places, even thrown out of the windows of high buildings to smash on the streets below. A source revealed that the campaign will be carried on with the same fervor and zeal till the complete destruction of these instruments of moral depravity. Aug. 9
Kabul: 16 Punished for Trimming Beard: [The religious police] arrested 16 people in raids on different parts of the city, on the charge of having their beard trimmed to less than the required length. Two taxi drivers were also arrested for taking unattended, unveiled women as passengers. Aug. 2
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/10/25/w...hnology-is-bad-visit-our-web-site.html?src=pm
Note: During the reign of the Taliban, Afghan people were expressly forbidden from watching television or listening to the radio. It was (and is) seen by Salafi Islamic people as Satanic and un-Islamic.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110507112820AAE0162
