Jim's Explanation of Christmas in Afghanistan

A family member asked about Christmas in Afghanistan, this is Jim's reply:

Sandy,

Regarding Christmas...the celebration of Christmas is not forbidden here. The Afghan Army officers that I work with are very accepting of our Christian traditions as we are of their Islamic traditions. They invite us to participate in their feasts, and we will invite them to participate in Christmas dinner with us. It is really an issue of being respectful of each others traditions and customs.

As a matter of fact, the Koran says (I have a book called "the Koran for Dummies :) that "Muslims should engage peaceful unbelievers with justice and kindness" (60:8). The Koran also calls for "dialogue between religions, cultures and civilizations regardless of faith in order to know one another, and by implication become close friends in mutual kindness" (16:125; 5:5, 49:13) Thus the Koran tells them that they should be accepting of other religions in order to promote mutual kindness.

Regarding Jesus, the Koran states that Jesus was a servant and prophet of God sent by God to the children of Israel. The Koran also opposes any belief about God that denies God's absolute unity as one deity...so, although they recognize Jesus as a prophet, and acknowledge the birth to the Virgin Mary, performance of miracles, and many other events found in the bible, the belief of a trinity is completely unacceptable to them. In other words...Jesus to them is an important guy, but not the son of God. So in their faith they do not celebrate the events of his life / death / resurrection.

That being said, on our little section of the base, we have Christmas decorations and such. We will take Christmas as a day off, and invite the officers of the Afghan National Army to partake of our Christmas meal. They will attend and be respectfully of our traditions. As far as celebration of Christmas among the local people, Southern Afghanistan is very fundamentalist (Islam) in their beliefs and I have not seen any Christians in the community. I would imagine that further north in Kabul however, there probably are communities of Christians. You must also understand that in the Pashtun areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan, the religion of Islam has also been mixed with what is called the code of the Pashtun or Pashtunwali. Pasthunwali is a code of conduct that is practiced by the Pashtun people that predates Islam and Christianity. When Islam came to the region, the customs of the religion were modified in order to accept and include the traditions of Pashtunwali...so even though the religion here is primarily Sunni Islam, the customs and traditions vary from what you would see as being practiced by Sunnis in Saudi Arabia...similar to how we as Christian have Catholic, Lutheran, Baptist, etc...all recognize Christ as the Son of God...but vary slightly in other ways. I hope this helps.

Very respectfully,

Jim