THE fate of Afghan Christians “now hangs by a gossamer thread”, a new report warns.
The report, Crimes Against Humanity and Potential Genocide: The threat posed by the Taliban regime of total eradication of the Christian community in Afghanistan, was published this month by the Lindisfarne Centre for the Study of Christian Persecution, a Christian research centre focused on Christian minorities in the Islamic world. It says that the Taliban’s legal framework provides “specific evidence of the intent to commit genocide”.
No modern Afghan government has officially recognised the existence of an indigenous Afghan Christian community. As such, all Afghan Christians — estimated in the report to number between 10,000 and 12,000 — are treated as converts from Islam and subject to the apostasy law, which requires all adult males to be executed. The new penal code, introduced in January, also stipulates that an apostate woman, for the purpose of compelling her to accept Islam, should be sentenced to life imprisonment, accompanied by ten lashes every three days.
These laws “provide specific evidence of intent to eradicate the Afghan Christian community”, the report states. It observes that the Taliban do not appear to be “consistently applying” punishments, including cases of apostasy, and that this may reflect an internal power struggle.
“Whether significant numbers of Afghan Christians live or die now literally depends on the whim of the Taliban supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, and whichever voices among senior Taliban he finds most persuasive at the time,” it concludes.
The strategy at present “appears to be heavily focused on obtaining intelligence relating to networks of Afghan Christians”, it says. “Clearly, that data is being collected for a purpose.”
There are, it says, “credible reports providing prima facie evidence” that Afghan Christians are being subjected to crimes against humanity including “encouraging and legitimising the killing of Christians as apostates by others”.
“All Afghan Christians face a serious risk of vigilante killing by other Afghans simply because they are Christians. The Taliban regime, who act as de facto state authorities, not only fail to protect them from this but have passed a specific law which specifically legitimises the killing of Afghan Christians and absolves those who carry out such acts from punishment.”
The report also lists credible accounts of the arrest, imprisonment, and interrogation of Afghan Christians because they are Christians, and torture, including beatings, electric shocks, burnings, suffocation, simulated drowning, solitary confinement, sexual violence, and mock executions. The new law on the “propagation of virtue and prevention of vice” that came into force in 2024 makes Islamic prayer legally compulsory for men.
The report’s authors are Dr Martin Parsons, the CEO of the Lindisfarne Centre, who holds a PhD in Christian and Islamic theology in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region; and Adrien Garnier, a research associate of the Lindisfarne Centre, who visited Afghanistan in 2025.
Its 125 pages include a history of Christianity in the country (dating back to the second century) and an overview of the development of Islam in the region and its application by successive governments. It highlights the challenges of collecting information about the lives of Christians, who make up around one per cent of the population, including experiences of persecution, exacerbated by the Taliban’s monitoring of social media and phones.
Dr Parsons recalls how, when he was living in Afghanistan in 1996, the Taliban killed a man who owned a Bible and refused to return to Islam. “Over the past 30 years, there have been a number of warning signs of the risk of widespread crimes against humanity and potential genocide to Afghan Christians,” he writes.
The report is critical of Western governments for failing to address the plight of Christians during the 20-year period of western military and political involvement (2001-21), including the failure to change the sentence of execution for apostasy in Afghan law.
Its recommendations include an investigation into crimes against humanity and potential genocide by the Afghan Taliban in relation to Afghan Christians by the International Criminal Court, and a call on the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to ensure that the level of priority Afghan Christians receive in refugee referrals to Western nations reflects “the exceptional threat that they face simply for being Christians”. Western governments “should, in principle, accept that any genuine Afghan Christian meets the criteria for refugee status”, it says.
Read the report at: christianpersecution.co.uk/lindisfarne-reports