Anarkali Kaur Honaryar is a Sikh Afghan politician. [1] She is also a women's rights activist and a dentist, as well as a medical doctor. [2]
There were only about 30,000 Sikhs and Hindus in Afghanistan, Anarkali Kaur Honaryar is one of them. She is the first non-Muslim member of National Assembly of Afghanistan. [3]
When Taliban was ousted in 2001, Honaryar studied medicine at the Kabul University. She has been a member of the Loya Jirga which choose Afghanistan's interim government after the decline of Taliban, and also an Afghan Constitution Committee member. [4] In 2006, she became a member of Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission. [2]
In 2010, Honaryar was elected for the country's Meshrano Jirga, and she was the first non-Muslim woman to achieve the milestone, she left from her post in mid 2015. [1]
On 22 August 2021, she came to India along with other Indians who were rescued by Indian forces from Afghanistan due to the Taliban siege of Afghanistan in 2021. [5]
Honaryar is a well-known human rights activist [4] and has been awarded with the UNESCO-Madanjeet Singh Prize for the Promotion of Tolerance and Non-Violence. [1] "for her work helping women who suffer from domestic abuse, forced marriages and gender discrimination and for her commitment to promote the ideals of human dignity, human rights, mutual respect and tolerance in her country." [6] Honaryar was also chosen by Radio Free Europe's Afghan chapter as person of the year in 2009. [4]
The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) is a women's organization based in Kabul, Afghanistan, that promotes women's rights and secular democracy. It was founded in 1977 by Meena Keshwar Kamal, an Afghan student activist who was assassinated in February 1987 for her political activities. The group, which supports non-violent strategies, had its initial office in Kabul, Afghanistan, but then moved to Pakistan in the early 1980s.
Freedom of religion in Afghanistan changed during the Islamic Republic installed in 2002 following a U.S.-led invasion that displaced the former Taliban government.
Ranjit Singh, popularly known as Sher-e-Punjab or "Lion of Punjab", was the first Maharaja of the Sikh Empire, which ruled the northwest Indian subcontinent in the early half of the 19th century. He survived smallpox in infancy but lost sight in his left eye. He fought his first battle alongside his father at age 10. After his father died, he fought several wars to expel the Afghans in his teenage years and was proclaimed as the "Maharaja of Punjab" at age 21. His empire grew in the Punjab region under his leadership through 1839.
xDr. Massouda Jalal is the first woman in the history of Afghanistan who ran for the Office of the President of Afghanistan in 2002, and again in 2004. She holds the distinction of being the first woman to compete for presidency in Afghanistan, a highly conservative society where women's engagement in public life was considered improper, unacceptable, and previously banned. Dr. Jalal emerged as a leading voice of Afghan women in 2001 after her election as the Representative to the 2002 Loya Jirga. While serving her term, she became one of the frontrunners for the position of Interim President, opposite to ex-president Hamid Karzai.
Hinduism in Afghanistan is practiced by a tiny minority of Afghans, believed to be about 30-40 individuals as of 2021, who live mostly in the cities of Kabul and Jalalabad. Afghan Hindus are ethnically Pashtun, Hindkowan (Hindki), Punjabi, or Sindhi and primarily speak Pashto, Hindko, Punjabi, Sindhi, Dari, and Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu).
Since the establishment of the Taliban-led government in 2021, Afghanistan has been widely considered to have one of the worst human rights records in the world. In 2022, Freedom House rated Afghanistan's freedom as 10 out of 100.
The term Talibanization refers to a type of Islamist practice that emerged following the rise of the Taliban movement in Afghanistan, where other religious groups or movements come to follow or imitate the strict practices of the Taliban.
The UNESCO-Madanjeet Singh Prize for the Promotion of Tolerance and Non-Violence is a prize awarded every two years by UNESCO. It was inaugurated in 1996, following the 1995 United Nations Year for Tolerance and in connection with the 125th anniversary of the birth of Mohandas Gandhi, funded by a donation from Madanjeet Singh.
Shukria Barakzai is an Afghan politician, journalist and a prominent Muslim feminist. She was the Ambassador of Afghanistan to Norway. She is a recipient of the International Editor of the Year Award.
Sikhism inAfghanistan in the contemporary era is limited to small populations, primarily in major cities, with the largest numbers of Afghan Sikhs living in Jalalabad, Ghazni, Kabul, and to a lesser extent in Kandahar and Khost. Sikhs have been the most prevalent non-Muslim minority in Afghanistan, and despite the many political changes in recent Afghan history, governments and political groups have generally not indulged in openly discriminating against the Sikh minority; however, their status have been severely impacted since the country's conflict since 1978.
The Parents Circle-Families Forum is a grassroots organization of Palestinian and Israeli families who have lost immediate family members due to the conflict. The PCFF operates under the principle that a process of reconciliation is a prerequisite for achieving a sustained peace. The PCFF is also known as Israeli Palestinian Bereaved Families for Reconciliation and Peace and as Bereaved Families Supporting Peace, Reconciliation, and Tolerance.
Hamida Barmaki was a renowned Afghan law professor and human rights activist. She was killed together with her family in a suicide attack.
Qadriya Yazdanparast is an Afghan politician and a commissioner at the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission. Before start working in the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission she resigned from her leadership position of the Jamiat-e Islami Afghanistan in order to fulfill the requirement of a commissioner to be non political. It is to be said that the Jamiat-e Islami is the biggest political party in the history of Afghanistan. She started her career during the Soviet–Afghan War. She studied jurisprudence and political science at Kabul University. Yazdanparast speaks Pashto, Dari, Dutch and English.
Fawzia Koofi is an Afghan politician, writer, and women's rights activist. Originally from Badakhshan province, Koofi was recently a member of the Afghan delegation negotiating peace with the Taliban in Doha Qatar. She is an ex Member of Parliament in Kabul and was the Vice President of the National Assembly.
Punjabis in Afghanistan were residents of Afghanistan who were of Punjabi ancestry. There was historically a small Punjabi community in the country, mainly consisting of Afghan Sikhs and Hindus.
Shafiqa Habibi is a journalist, television anchor, activist and politician from Afghanistan. She is known for her work to support women journalists, and for her 2004 candidacy for Vice President of Afghanistan as the running mate of Abdul Rashid Dostum.
Fatima Aziz was an Afghan physician and politician. In 2005, she was elected to the lower house of parliament as representative of Kunduz province in Afghanistan's first free parliamentary election in decades. She was re-elected in the 2010 and 2018 elections. She served as an MP until her death from cancer in 2021.
On 25 March 2020, ISIS-Haqqani network gunmen and suicide bombers attacked the Gurdwara Har Rai Sahib in Kabul, Afghanistan.
Narendra Singh Khalsa is a Sikh Afghan politician. He is the Member of the Afghan Parliament. In January 2019, he secured a seat in the Lower House of the Parliament after winning the 2018 Afghan parliamentary election on behalf of the Sikh and Hindu community.
Faizullah Jalal was born on 22 May 1963 in Badakhshan, Afghanistan. He is a law and political science professor at Kabul University, one of the principle and oldest institutions of higher education in Afghanistan. He previously served as head the Department of Law and Political Science for 14 years, as the Vice-Chancellor of the Kabul University, and as Deputy Minister for Academic Affairs in the Ministry of Higher Education of Afghanistan. Professor Jalal has a bachelor's degree in Law and Political Science from Kabul University and a master's and Ph.D. in political science from the Tajik National University. He is the author of several published books and a variety of articles. His recent books include (1) Political Power and Nation-Building in Afghanistan, (2) The Face of International Terrorism, and (3) An Inquiry into Violence Against Women in Afghanistan.