For the Sake of God and a Sense of Justice: Past Realities and Future Possibilities of Religious Reform in Afghanistan

This article brings into conversation the dialectic of religious reform in Afghanistan by engaging with three key scholars and their approaches to the utilization of religion as the source for activating the public toward political participation without armed violence. The shifts and trajectories within their pragmatic political philosophy offers an untapped category of possibilities and counter-movement to the violence and vectors of the Taliban that has employed religion toward terrorism and domination. I argue that religious reform is an intentional cosmology rooted in and referencing the familiar tradition void of dogmatic drama or a return to a utopian past. Reform involves the utilization of the grammar and gnostics of the tradition to align and agitate the population toward change and is most viable by the participation of individuals with mastery of the tradition. Such a path is both a socialization that is rooted in an ethical conduct toward the immediate/self but also the other/outside(r) world.