The Afghan calendar year that ended last week, marked one of the bloodiest of the past fourteen years of US-led intervention in Afghanistan. For Afghans, the start of the year was a depressing reminder of last year’s Nowroz celebration when a local journalist, his wife and two children, were massacred in a terrorist attack at Serena Hotel. Another, even more shocking event has taken Afghans - particularly residents of Kabul - totally by a surprise this year.
On March 19th, a twenty seven year old woman, Farkhunda, was accused by a local cleric (Mullah) and some Shrine keepers at the Shah-e-Du-Shamshira shrine of burning some verses of the Qur’an. A video on social media shows a smaller group of men briefly interrogating Farkhunda, while she keeps insisting that she did not burn the Qur’an. The men take her out of the shrine and start to beat her, throwing stones at her, running her body over with a Toyota 4x4, and then still not satisfied by that, they throw her burning body in flames into the bed of the Kabul river. This all happens in the presence of a large crowd of spectators, including a bunch of policemen who were on site. The only thing some of the spectators did aside from watching, was to take photos and videos which have become crucial to the current investigation tracking the perpetrators and leading to some arrests.
The incident was initially reported by local media, and international media outlets later followed suit with extensive coverage as different aspects of the event started to unfold. At first it was reported that security officers asked the family of the victim to leave their home in fear of further retaliations, and declared Farkhunda to be mentally ill, which could attribute her alleged action to her being insane. But later, as the videos of the event spread on social media, it was revealed that she was innocent, and the Ministry of Religious Affairs confirmed she did not burn pages of the Holy Book, but bits of paper that the shrine Mullah used for his treatments stemming from superstition. These are used as amulets to treat women (and men) for infertility and other, often psychological, ailments. This form of folk healing through prescribing Taweez or amulets by such mullahs is part of popular religion and it fills the existing gap of psycho-social treatments that are unavailable across the country.
