Mujib Rahman Ansari
Taliban-aligned preacher who ruled a Herat district.
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Mujib-ur-Rahman Ansari was an Afghan Islamic scholar and Hanafi preacher based in Herat. An ally of the Taliban, he was a vocal opponent of the American-backed Afghan government and seized control of a district in Herat, where he established extrajudicial sharia courts and checkpoints. He was assassinated in a suicide bombing on 2 September 2022.
Biography
Mujib-ur-Rahman Ansari was born in 1982 in Herat. He claimed descent from the 11th-century Afghan saint Abdullah Ansari. He received his primary religious education at the Darul Uloom Ansar in Herat.
After criticizing the Afghan government in the early 1990s, he was pressured to continue his studies in Saudi Arabia, where he was taught about Wahhabism. While there, he began publishing articles in the Persian-language version of Wesal Haq TV. After returning to Afghanistan, he first gained notice in the mid-2000s for criticizing Herat's governor, Sayyid Muhammad Khairkhwah. His influence grew sharply after the early 2010s, when he and his followers occupied a stadium to prevent a music concert.
He became imam of the Gozargah Mosque in northern Herat and a trustee of the Shrine of Khwaja Abd Allah. Thousands attended his services, undergoing body searches; the compound was guarded by armed men in white robes with crossed swords, whom Ansari described as bodyguards. He spread his sermons via Facebook, Instagram, and a personal radio station, using his platform to denounce the Afghan government as corrupt, un-Islamic, and an American puppet.
Death
Ansari was killed on 2 September 2022 by a suicide bomber outside his mosque. He had just returned from a meeting with deputy prime minister Abdul Ghani Baradar when the bomber kissed his hand and detonated, killing Ansari and others. The Taliban government reported 18 dead, while Al Jazeera gave 28 fatalities and a local newspaper 48.
Among the dead were Ansari's brother, parishioners, and bodyguards. No group claimed responsibility, but the Taliban government blamed the Islamic State – Khorasan Province. Ansari was the fourth Taliban-aligned cleric killed in two months; Rahimullah Haqqani had died weeks earlier. The Taliban condemned the attack, with spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid and Herat governor Noor Mohammad Islamjar vowing revenge.
Former president Hamid Karzai and former chief executive Abdullah Abdullah also condemned it, without naming Ansari. The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, the Iranian Foreign Ministry, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, Pakistan, and Qatar likewise condemned the bombing. Some critics celebrated his death; Rahmatullah Nabil tweeted a proverb about snakes, while Samira Hamidi of Amnesty International said celebrating was wrong because his followers remained.
Views and influence
Ansari was considered a radical preacher with hardline opinions. About 1,000 students studied under him at his mosque. After taking control of the Gozargah district, he imposed his interpretation of sharia law.
Contact between unmarried or unrelated men and women was banned; men were beaten, women returned to their families. Couples were stopped at checkpoints and forced to show marriage licenses. Music was also banned. He held extrajudicial tribunals that bypassed the Afghan legal system, and in one speech said he would administer hudud for adultery, theft, or alcohol consumption, suggesting stoning for adulterers and amputation for thieves.
Ansari was known for outspoken misogyny: he opposed women being outside the home under any pretext and barred them from his press conferences. He stated that most women go to hell and that a man whose wife does not fully cover herself is a coward. Nonetheless, he supported women's education at segregated schools and universities.
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Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Mujib Rahman Ansari (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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