RASC News Agency: Credible local sources in Kunduz province have documented a pattern of egregious physical abuse against minors perpetrated by mosque clerics and religious school instructors, with numerous reports of children enduring brutal corporal punishment under the guise of religious education. On Wednesday, March 26, multiple eyewitness accounts confirmed that an Imam in Imam Sahib district viciously assaulted two young boys ages six and seven leaving both unconscious. In a particularly disturbing detail, one victim was the cleric’s own son while the other attended a local Madrasa. The alleged provocation? A minor childhood altercation.
Investigative findings reveal an institutionalized culture of abuse, with victims routinely subjected to medieval disciplinary practices including wrist-binding and public lashings. This brutality occurs against the backdrop of the Taliban’s nationwide initiative to replace secular education with religious indoctrination. Since assuming power, the regime has implemented a cleric stipend program specifically designed to propagate their fundamentalist interpretation of Islamic law.
While systematically dismantling Afghanistan’s formal education system particularly targeting girls’ access to schooling the Taliban have aggressively expanded their network of radical Madrassas. Disturbingly, residents report that known child abusers continue operating with impunity in these institutions. “Several clerics have been caught beating and even molesting children,” disclosed one Imam Sahib elder who requested anonymity, “yet desperate families keep sending their children to them because there are no alternatives.”
