Ten Pillars of Education for Afghanistan

Ten Pillars of Education for Afghanistan

An effort in initiating multi-ethnic, multicultural, multilingual and multi-religious concepts, approaches and practices in Afghanistan – in replacement of the Islamic extremism and barbarism.

By Prof. Dr Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis

At the moment of emergence of a new, post-colonial country at the heights of Hindu-Kush, and following the official announcement of the results of the presidential elections, it is necessary to reconsider many of our fixed ideas about Central Asia, and more specifically about Afghanistan.

The Colonial Disastrous Past

Afghanistan emerges after many centuries of implacable and destructive involvement of the colonial countries, namely Russia (momentarily transfigured as USSR for the period 1917 – 1991), England, and France. It would be actually wrong to think that Russia – USSR, and England were the only foreign powers involved in the case of Afghanistan. France’s recent involvement in the reconstruction campaign does not testify to a hypothetically positive attitude and constructive willingness but to the existence of serious French interests that go far beyond the level of personal connections (Massoud, Bernard Henri Levy).

In the case of Afghanistan, as well as elsewhere, the quintessence of Colonialism is not attested only in terms of brutal, locally exercised, power; it consists mainly n a vicious geo-strategic plan of a world dominated by France, Russia and England. This ge0-strategic plan has been carried out through a) military and political presence, b) vicious and pernicious ideological infiltration, c) sophisticated political machinations, and/or d) a combination of the aforementioned.

As is quite well known, in the case of Afghanistan, there could not be French military and political presence, since France did not possess any land dominion nearby Afghanistan (contrarily to Russia that expanded in Central Asia, and to England that annexed India). There was however a French ideological infiltration that was accomplished through the diffusion of the theory of Nationalism, as well as the propagation of various Western historical, philosophical, and ideological concepts that were irrelevant of and alien for Afghanistan. In addition, there were sophisticated political machinations based upon the aforementioned false and misleading concepts.

The ‘secret’, ultimate goal of these machinations was the collapse of the Persian Empire that was the great unifying factor of culture, education, and political order in the east of the Ottoman Empire. Persia was extended throughout Central Asia, and had borders with another great Muslim state, the Mogul Empire of India. The three great Muslim countries, Ottoman Caliphate, Persia, and Mogul India, made it possible for anyone living just 300 years ago to move from the Westernmost confines of the Mediterranean to the area of Indochina and Indonesia by crossing only two borders! The collapse and destruction of these three powerful Muslim states could not happen without the spread of falsehood, division, hatred, rebellion, strife, wars, and miseries that were all based on the pernicious concept of ‘differentiation’.

This bogus-concept was projected to various local peoples, ethnic, linguistic, religious, and cultural groups allover the world in order to be viewed as polarization among neighbors, rivalry among coreligionists, and fratricidal enmity. The false concept of ‘differentiation’ largely expanded through the theory of Nationalism that was perniciously presented as ‘ultimate salvation’ and an all-times panacea to the peoples concerned. Insignificant, quasi-inexistent, analphabetic, tribal leaders were promised great wealth and undreamt power, if they were to turn against the Sultan, the Shah, and the Great Mogul! It would be very mistaken to think that the false concept was applied everywhere! In many cases where it did not cope with the colonial interests, it was completely ‘forgotten’. All this disastrous work emanated mostly from France, and only to lesser extent from England, Russia, Germany and other European powers.

In this regard, it is essential to understand that the false theory that an ‘Afghani’ needed a state apart, other than Persia or Mogul India, was properly ‘decorated’ with numerous elements of cultural localism, and with an unprecedented accentuation of the differences that may exist between let us say Herat and Tabriz!

This was made deliberately and very maliciously; if there was truth in it, Catalonia should have been urged to get independence from Spain long ago! If the intention of the criminal colonial powers was true, Scotland should have already got its independence, and Ireland should not have been plunged into the terrible bloodshed, which left that island divided until now, and inhabited by so sparse population. Even more so, the abominable cemetery of peoples named ‘France’ should never have existed, and in the place of that butchery a great number of independent states should have been formed, namely Brittany, Corsica, Alsace – Lorraine, Provence - Languedoc, and Basque country (Euskadi), whereas the rest should have been called Gaul, not France.

Along with nationalism, France imposed – through the bias of its militant and deeply ideologized bogus universities - a totally false, absolutely dogmatic, and viciously perverted version of History, as well as cultural, educational, ideological, and political choices that do not correspond to the natural and authentic interests, the cultural background, and diachronic charcateristics of the various local peoples in Afghanistan. To them was therefore projected and imposed a vision of the World, according to which Afghanistan’s ‘independence’ would become the alibi of permanent underdevelopment, misery, poverty, cultural alienation, and ultimate transfiguration. For the anti-human needs of France, Russia and England, the peoples of Afghanistan would not form a highly civilized province of a big country, but a semi-barbaric, miserable, isolated, small, but independent, country.

Afghanistan was not the only victim of the colonial scheme; dozens of countries in Asia and Africa emerged out of the malicious destruction of the three, aforementioned, great Muslim countries. Part of the French colonial machination as well is the local rise of an anti-nationalist, bogus-Islamic opposition that was not based on the philosophical – ideological – cultural background of the historical Islam but emanated from a long procedure of ideological - theoretical deformation and alteration of the top concepts of the Islamic Ages Civilization. French and other European colonialists did not generate this development, but were able to easily maneuver its basic factors, the analphabetic and uneducated local religious leaders and the barbaric, tribal rulers, who were taught by the Colonial agents how to become traitors and outlaws, how to hate the political authority of their own country, and how to spread discordance and disaster in their own land.

More precisely the epicenter of the colonial machination was the following scheme: having noticed that within the 17th and 18th Islamic World the ailing political, intellectual and academic establishments of Istanbul, Esfahan, and Delhi were facing a challenge because of the rise of uneducated, obscurantist, and falsifying theologians, who gradually gained control of the masses, and plunged their respective countries in absolute barbarism, without facing serious obstacles in their perverted activities, France, Russia and England acted as an authentic ally of these barbaric, anti-Islamic theologians of the lower and illiterate classes.

Thus, the colonial powers placed the Sultan and the Shah in the most difficult position, and ensured the ultimate collapse of the Ottoman Empire and Persia, which was the paranoiac aim of France, Russia and England. By doing so, they guaranteed the later explosion of the Islamic radicalism, extremism, terrorism and suicide bombing. By destroying the only obstacle to what seems to be threat no 1 within our global world, the Colonial powers are the only responsible for all the negative developments that were unfolded over the past eighty years in the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa.

Focusing on their destructive work of infiltration, we can note that the colonial powers proceeded to even worse attempts of infiltration that precipitated even worse developments; they pushed towards a limited westernization by educating a tiny elite-to-be in the split provinces of the three collapsed empires. While doing so, they were fully aware of the fact that the only opposition to this westernization would not come from the old, civilized, intellectual – academic – political Islamic class that had collapsed and disappeared, but from the still existing, uneducated, ignorant and barbaric, false sheikhs, who would be therefore left alone in ‘representing’ – read discrediting – Islam. The ensuing juxtaposition and polarization would condemn these split provinces to permanent underdevelopment and disaster. In addition, it would never allow again the rise of an authentic Islamic cultural, intellectual – academic, and political profile that of course would be at the antipodes of the modern illiterate sheikhs of Hatred, the likes of Khomeini, sheikh Shaarawi and Mullah Umar. This seems to have been the central target of the perverted French colonial strategy, but of course it testifies to extreme paranoia, since this would lead, as it actually did, to the Islamic radicalism, extremism, and terrorism.

Certainly, this is not the way the Colonial powers expected things to come to pass, but – again – this is an additional proof of their superficial approach, of their interest for provisory profit, and of their long-term catastrophic performance. Acting in the way we have just described, the Colonial powers were misled to believe that their colonial ‘achievements’ would guarantee
a) many centuries of asphyxia for the real Islam,
b) very long periods of misrepresentation of Islam by the barbaric and semi -cannibalistic sheikhs,
c) guaranteed, permanent defamation for Islam, considered as basic ‘enemy’,
d) the existence of besotted and fanatic masses that could be easily maneuvered and permanently exploited, and – last but not least –
e) the lack of any major theoretical, scientific, intellectual, artistic, and political creativity and inventiveness within the area of Islam.

Exit from the Colonial Era

First to get out of this vicious circle was Turkey; the country at the junction of two continents rejected the Caliphate and the catastrophically false version of Islam in which France passionately and devotedly attempted to have all the Muslim countries permanently engulfed and submerged, since this false Islam ensures permanent dependence, underdevelopment, analphabetism, ignorance, poverty, starvation, pestilence and misery, as we have already seen.

It would be very wrong to interpret the colossal work of Mustafa Kemal Pasha Ataturk as an imitation of French policies and as an application of French prescriptions. Of course, one could be left with the impression that this great work – undertaken in the 1920s and the 30s – looks like implementation of French prescriptions! However, tackling a subject like that, one should first consider how similar France and America look to each other, and how different they truly are, and have always been.

Truly speaking, Ataturk is much closer to the Great Founding Fathers of America than to Robespierre and Napoleon, let alone Poincare and Clemenceau! He certainly had to stress the unifying concept ‘one people – one nation’, but he actually led the Turks to a pertinent introspection, and to an accurate study of their past, including Hittites, Luwites, Hatti, Urartu, Assyrians, Sumerians, Persians, Greeks and Romans, not only the cultural background of the Turkic peoples, and the input of Islamic Times.

Ataturk broke down the Colonial, typically French, concept (which became a persistently sought political – cultural target of France) that a Moroccan, a Lebanese, an Abyssinian, an Indian and an Indonesian are obliged to go to a European capital in order to study the past of their respective countries best. The rejection of the disastrous French policies and the imitation of the American innovative and emancipative model is quite indicative, if one compares Turkey to backward Egypt with regard to local progress made in the study of the indigenous past civilizations, languages and scriptures. More than 100 years after the monumental publication ‘Description de l’ Egypte’ and the decipherment of the Egyptian Hieroglyphics by J. F. Champollion, there was not a single Egyptian historian, archeologist or philologist specialized in Egyptology at a European university professor’s level. Thanks to Ataturk, in Turkey there were Turkish specialists on Hittite Civilization, Language and Scriptures, who partly contributed to the decipherment of the Hittite itself, and helped unearth a great part of Hittite, Hatti, Luwian, and Assyrian antiquities. The difference is just chaotic!

Truly speaking, one cannot find a single country where the French colonial model was applied – from Morocco to Egypt and from Syria to Madagascar, from Greece to Vietnam and from Lebanon to Abyssinia – in which the past of the country itself is better studied locally than in the universities of the Colonial countries of Europe, and in North America! The only exception in this regard is until now Turkey!

Ataturk broke down the Colonial – French deceitful scheme, according to which in a colonized country no one cares or is able to study the past of numerous other peoples and civilizations in depth and in a proper manner. Again, if one searches out from Indonesia to Morocco and from Kazakhstan to Tanzania, one cannot find a single colonized country where the past of numerous other civilizations can be studied, investigated, discussed and represented in a university and/or research center as properly as it can be in European universities. Turkey is different in this as well.

Present Day Challenges

Like any other development, situation and scheme across the Human History, the Colonial Scheme was meant to end one way or another. Instead of Turkey mounting a counter-attack against the Colonial Powers, the Islamic Terrorism – that is an authentic consequence of the Colonial Scheme – brought America against the unrepentant Colonial powers, France and Russia, now purposelessly followed by Germany. What the entire world came to notice very well during the Second Gulf War, namely the formation of an axis against America, is the final reaction of the ailing and collapsing Colonial powers. With a strong diplomatic past, and with impressive experience in the falsification and the hypocrisy needed, these powers created the false impression that they were striving for Peace, that they wished to reach the targeted solution of the ‘Iraqi’ problem through peace, and that they had a humanitarian face. If all this was truly their policy, they should not have interfered in the Middle East, Central Asia, India, Indochina, and Africa during the three last centuries. The miserable and execrable French president, attempting to veto a UN resolution for War against Saddam Hussein, should not be considered as just War Criminal but as Serial Killer for three centuries of Criminal Colonial Murders and Genocides.

The September 11th events mark truly the beginning of a great change of the world, heralding the dead end of the Colonial Times, and the ultimate and severe Punishment of France. Threatened America started immediately a global war against Terrorism. This instinctive reaction turns automatically against the world as conceived and machinated by France, Russia, England, and the other Colonial powers (Italy, Holland, Belgium, Germany, and of course Spain and Portugal).

It is expected to bring an end to French presence outside Europe, in a similar way to what happened to Spain in the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries.

To eradicate Islamic Terrorism America has to put an end to the entire, Colonial scheme, and to bring down the perilous fabrication of the nationalist states that have to be replaced by larger alliances of free, democratic, consciously multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-religious, and multi-lingual entities. At the same time, to annihilate the fabric of Islamic Terrorism, America has to bring a dead end to the local representatives of Jacques Chirac, i.e. the realm of obscurantist, illiterate, uneducated, fanatic sheikhs of Hatred, who took hold of Islam over the past centuries, properly working for the French Colonial interests.

A second mandate for President Bush may herald a deeper and better understanding of the causes of Islamic Terrorism, and may lead the American Administration to tackle the issue at its real birth place, i.e. the criminal system of the locally projected, colonial and de-personifying, bogus-education. The international involvement in Afghanistan – under American impulse – should therefore take the form of the initiation of the Afghani people into the depth of the country’s great cultural past, into the riches of the diachronic Afghani multi-cultural identity, as well as into the perspectives of a developed country.

The Educational Reconstruction of Afghanistan

This great effort has to start precisely from the point many American universities have reached, namely a) the rejection of the French and European Greeco-Romano-centrism as Colonial Times Racism, and b) the refutation of the French and European Orientalism as Cultural - Academic Discrimination. American scholars like Martin Bernal, the famous author of Black Athena, and Edouard Said, well known for his celebrated ‘Orientalism’, and academic circles like the so-called ‘Afro-centrists’ have made significant breakthroughs in this regard over the past two decades. Yet, all these innovative and elaborate approaches are still prohibited in the bogus universities of Criminal Colonial France.

It is necessary to enumerate here the reasons French academia shaped Orientalist disciplines, and attempted to interpret and ‘mend’ the Middle East, Africa, and Asia through these false theoretical fabrications.

The French concept of Orientalism has been developed in order to
1. disentangle the various peoples of Afghanistan, Central Asia, Africa, and the Middle East from their own identity and historical culture,
2. isolate the Pre-Islamic Oriental Past from the various Asiatic and African peoples, as if Pre-Islamic Antiquity were something absolutely dead and unrelated to them and to their present identity (contrarily to what vicious French ‘scholars’ and ‘intellectuals’ had done and kept doing in regard with the Greek and Roman past and its relationship with the modern European peoples),
3. minimize the unprecedented and unequalled impact the Oriental Past had on the formation of all aspects of civilization, culture, knowledge, ideology, art and behaviour on the Ancient Greeks and the Romans, and
4. dissociate the Classical Islamic Civilization from the cultural identity of so many Asiatic, African and European peoples.

The question conscious Afghanis and anti-Colonial Americans must put in front of themselves today is the following:
- ‘How today’s Afghanis can imitate the Turks of the 20s and the 30s and re-install national sovereignty and self-respect?

We certainly live in a different world than the years that heralded the Great Depression and the rise of Middle European totalitarianism that was a direct, reaction to Colonialism. Multi-cultural, multi-linguistic, multi-ethnic, and multi-religious environment is by now a wholly respected reality, whereas in the 1920s prevailed the Colonial need for setting up compact – and quite artificial – nations! Nowadays, a variety of small communities, democratically ruled and incorporated into a larger context, is the quintessence of the modern quest for the best political solution of the problems that our multi-divided world faces.

Within this context, we cannot afford anymore to tolerate the criminal French strategy of setting up bogus historical dogmas, and of engulfing the global community into cultural discrimination, educational and economic underdevelopment, and hideous barbarism of the type of the Algerian butchery and/or the Rwandan genocide. We truly cannot afford to accept the French malignant policies of different measures and rules for the different places they may apply to. What is politically, educationally and culturally ‘correct’ and ‘good’ for Europe is also ‘constructive’ and ‘positive’ for the Middle East, Africa, Central Asia, and/or any other part of the world. Before eventually joining larger unions, small but multi-ethnic countries have to go federal or to split in common agreement and understanding. The best example is given by the former Czechoslovakia that first split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and later re-found unity within the European Union.

The way for Afghanistan is the strict and all-committed declaration of acknowledged multiculturalism. Better this is understood, faster progress, speedier development and more overwhelming change will come across to Afghanistan. The best way for Afghanistan to forge a paradigmatic multicultural society and state in Central Asia is to focus heavily and extensively on Education, Primary, Secondary, and Academic Education. This will help Afghanistan change, and turn from a rogue/pariah state to a regional model able to boldly apply multiculturalism, something that is banned by totalitarian and tyrannical France labeled as ‘communautarisme’.

It is actually urgent that Afghanistan finds out the key to the successful establishment of a multi-cultural society on its soil! Major changes are pending in Iran, Pakistan and Syria in the years ahead; not before too long theoretical approaches to an eventual Union of the Middle East, Caucasus and Central Asia will emanate from various emerging political groups that intend to totally annihilate the disastrous colonial work of division that was shamefully promoted by France. According to these forthcoming political approaches, Turkey should become the spearhead of the regional development, and the natural leader towards modernism in an effort to establish a pluralistic democratic society for 450 million people who will share common traditions and interests. Afghanistan must be therefore ready for such a large Asiatic Union.

From the earliest moments and steps of the effort a fresh, multicultural wind must enter the Afghani Education manuals. History, History of Religions, Languages and Literatures, Art History, Philosophy, Geography, Ethics, and Civic Education must be properly represented within new manuals in a way to set up a completely different set up of concepts and ideas, a new Afghani mindset! Modern Bactrians must become proud for the greatness of their past, and as open-minded as their land was always open to so many circulating ideas, religions, theories and ideologies. This New Education must have solid foundations on the real history of that great land, be it called Bactria, Kushan or Afghanistan. It must make all the ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and religious groups of Afghanistan feel that they are all equally present and equally presented in the shaping of a democratic country. This education must reflect pertinently the diachronic aspects and characteristics of that land, its monuments, as well as the historical texts that relate to its past. The overall contribution of Bactria / Kushan / Afghanistan to the World History must be sufficiently presented.

In this regard, it is essential to avoid typical colonial ‘traps’, namely
a) the forged historiography fabricated by the French bogus academic school of the Annales,
b) the demand for proportional re-presentation of each community according to terms of population, since this allows – sooner or later – the stronger group to achieve a very controversial and definitely partial sovereignty that is later used by that group against the rest, and
c) the oblivion of past cultural elements (under the pretext that they ceased to exist).
It is essential to understand that if we fail to achieve a proper implementation of multiculturalism in Afghanistan, ‘History will be repeated as a farce’, and one group will try to impose itself on the rest. Then, everything will turn into a nightmare that will be good only for the apparent, unholy, alliance between Ossama bin Laden and the French political and ‘academic’ establishment.

Certainly the educational system of some countries can be taken as a good example. Italy offers a first example; the ancient Romans are not there anymore, but the average Italian education is abundant in Latin texts, and in references to the Ancient Roman culture and civilization. The ancient Ionians ceased to exist, but they are present indeed in the manuals of Philosophy of the Greek Secondary education that are extensive, when it comes to the Pre-Socratic philosophers of Ionia. It must be therefore clearly understood, and targeted from the very early stages of the reconstruction effort: the respective educational material must be made available to all the Afghani schoolchildren and students in the same abundant and extensive way. This reality cannot be compromised without a serious overall setback.

Methods and approaches

Through what method and approach should the New Afghani Educational System come to exist?

A. When it comes to historical past, all the civilizations, cultures, ideologies, and religions, as well as state formations developed on Afghani soil should be approached in terms of equity, historical relativity, free understanding, and all-committed acceptance of the culturally ‘other’.

B. The languages of the various linguistic groups and communities of Afghanistan must be employed at the level of the primary and secondary education: Dari, Pashto, Uzbek, and Turkmen speaking people must have 12-year education in their respective languages. They all must be raised to the level of official language of the country.

C. A great selection of local, regional, and international languages must be offered to the young Afghani schoolchildren and students. Multilingualism is among the top desiderata of multiculturalism.

D. To all schoolchildren and students in Afghanistan a second local language should be obligatory for 9 years, but throughout the country any selected as second language should not be offered to more than 40% of the students, so that a balanced situation be ultimately created.

E. A 12-year syllabus ‘English as first foreign language’ must be complemented by a 6-year syllabus of second foreign language; for the latter the strong candidates should be Turkish, Farsi, Urdu, Russian, and Chinese. Again, throughout the country any selected as second foreign language should not be offered to more than 33% of the number of the students, so that a balanced situation be created in this regard as well.

Ten Pillars of Successful Education for Afghanistan

What are the seminal and primordial circles on which the future Afghani education should be based? Ten major circles of historical evolution and cultural achievements are involved in this regard. Even if only one is missing, the result is going to be an unbalanced or minimized perception of the dimensions of the country’s contribution to the History of the Mankind. In the past, several of these pillars were present, but undermined, other pillars were totally absent, and finally one pillar was excessively over-accentuated and misleadingly presented. In the continuation, the Ten Pillars are briefly specified, and consideration is given to the way they should be developed through the 12-year obligatory Education that the current Afghani government has to stipulate.

Every cultural – historical unity must be present at all levels: History, Literature, Language, Art History, History of the Religion, Philosophy, including also Sciences, i.e. Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, and Cosmology.

The First Pillar is Iran. One must not forget that in the great theoretical – cosmological approach that we attest within Zoroastrianism, Zendism, and Mazdeism (the three successive official religious dogmas of Achaemenid, Arsacid and Sassanid Iran), namely the division of the entire surface of the Earth into Iran (conceived as the realm of Ahura Mazda - God) and ‘Aniran’ (perceived as the dominion of Ahriman - Evil), the area of Afghanistan belongs always to Iran! The theoretical approach was however a political reality for many centuries of Pre-Islamic Iranian civilization, since the area of Afghanistan was an important Iranian province. Many important Iranian figures, throughout the Pre-Islamic and the Islamic times, from Zoroaster (Zardosht) to Djelaleddin Roumi were born in Afghanistan. Knowledge about Pre-Islamic Iran – as is meant here – is essential for any Afghani.

The Second Pillar is the Hellenistic kingdom of Bactria. This historical circle reflects the first period during which an important state was formed with capital located on present day Afghani soil. From the importance of the area for Alexander’s penetration to India and from the Macedonian and Greek cultures diffused on Afghani soil to the prominently holy position of Iskander Dhou’ l Qarnayn in the Islamic Tradition, and to the interconnection of the Hellenistic state with Indian states and with Arsacid Iran, a wide range of subjects will help the Afghanis get familiarized with the Mediterranean world. At the same time, this pillar allows a better focus on the province of Nuristan, where – as in the Northern provinces of Pakistan – survive Pre-Islamic cultures of Iranian – Bactrian background.

The Third Pillar is the Great Empire of Kushan. This circle needs actually greater research effort among specialists, but the importance of the great state at the Asiatic silk-crossroads has been highlighted by various foreign sources from the Mediterranean to China. Shaped at a moment the Arsacid empire of Iran was collapsing, Kushan was the converging point of the land and the sea trade routes linking the East with the West. The famous text ‘Periplus of the Red Sea’, written in Greek by an Alexandrian Egyptian captain and merchant of the second half of the 1st century CE, bears evidence to trade routes linking Alexandria and the Mediterranean, through the Red Sea, with Barbarikon port of call nearby the Indus river estuary, and further on with Central Asia and China. Through all these interactions, a great Kushanic – Afghanic radiation has been noted throughout India, where local art imitated Kushanic numismatic like the gold coins of King Huvishka (as already presented in modern bibliography by A. S. Altekar, P.L. Gupta, and G. Yazdani).

The Fourth Pillar is India. The interactions with and the vicinity of India are such that it is necessary for modern Afghanis to be well acquainted with the world of the Subcontinent. Even more so, since present day Afghanistan was the circumference of the early Indus Civilization milieu that thrived in the 1st half of the 2nd millennium BCE. The world of the Vedas, Asoka, the Gupta dynasty, they are all subjects related to the cultural background of Afghanistan.

The Fifth Pillar is Buddhism. It is through Bactria that Buddhism found its way to China, Tibet, Korea and Japan. The great Buddha statues at Bamian testify to the diachronic Buddhist seal stamped over Bactria. Buddhism’s itinerary through Afghanistan must become for every Afghani the turning point in the personal itinerary from localism to multiculturalism.

The Sixth Pillar is Manichaeism. When Mani preached his dogma in Ctesiphon, in present day Iraq, few Iranian magistrates around Shapur I would have imagined that this religious – philosophical system that incorporates a non Christian interpretation of Jesus would have been the first to have followers expanding from the Atlantic to the Pacific! Afghanistan was instrumental for the diffusion of Manichaeism to Central Asia, and Manichaeist beliefs and practices have survived until now within Central Asiatic Islam. When Manichaeism became a threat for the official Sassanid imperial dogma, i.e. Mazdeism, the system of Mani was persecuted, and the Manichaeists escaped either in Afghanistan (in the East) or in Egypt (in the West). Soon afterwards, they expanded further on.

The Seventh Pillar is Nestorianism. The most important current among the Christian theological systems in the east of the Eastern Roman Empire was that of Nestorius. At the same time, as Christian denomination, Nestorianism is the closest to Islam. The ‘Great Church of the East’ survived until now, following the preaching of the Great Aramean theologian, who emphasized that Jesus was only human, not human and divine (as the mainstream Christianity accepted in Constantinople / Istanbul and in Rome), and not only divine (as the counterfeit Monophysitic churches of Syria, Armenia, Georgia, Egypt, Nobatia, and Abyssinia propagated). Despite the existing serious nuances (icons were prohibited), Nestorianism was always viewed as Roman political tool of infiltration in Iran, and therefore persecuted. Through Afghanistan Nestorianism spread out throughout Central Asia and China.

The Eighth Pillar is the Central Asiatic milieu of the Turkic Peoples. The great migration of Asiatic peoples to the West may have been felt very early in Afghanistan with the arrival of the Ephthalite (White) Huns, but ever since Afghanistan was either a shelter or a crossing point for numerous Altaic – Turkic peoples. Becoming more acquainted with the Turkic cultural environment is for an Afghani a matter of deep introspection.

The Ninth Pillar is Islam. Instead of focusing on the local dynasty of Ghaznavids, Afghanis should be rather initiated into the Universal and Multicultural marvels of diachronic Islam; Djenne Djenno and the Malian Islam, Andalusia and Kairwan, Harar and Fur in Eastern Africa, Bosnia and Konya, Istanbul and Bursa, plus a wide spectrum of Iranian, Yemenite, Indian, Malay, and Central Asiatic Islamic cultural aspects will give the average Afghani the keys to a real understanding of the historical Islam. This will be the best remedy for the disastrous work of Islamic falsification as carried out so long by the illiterate Taliban.

The Tenth Pillar is Modern West. Finally, an introduction to the basic ideals of Renaissance, Classicism, modern Europe and America, and a presentation of the modern Search for Democracy and Human Rights will complete the educational picture of modern Afghani students, preparing them for our Global World in the best possible way.

The success of such an ambitious educational project relies certainly on international and humanitarian help. The correct manuals must be written, the proper human resources must be trained, plus the material support must be offered. A critical point will be the translation of many books and historical sources into the basic languages of Afghanistan, Without a great infrastructure project that will give the Afghanis real access to textual source and literary evidence, any possible course, any lecture, any proper manual will remain superficial. For this infrastructure project ‘Sources for a Multicultural Afghanistan’ we will dedicate another article.