By TwoCircles.net news desk
New Delhi: Separatist Kashmiri leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani has condemned in strongest terms the practice by the Taliban in their occupied areas in Pakistan whereby they are enforcing Sikh minority to cough up huge amount in the name of jizia.
While blasting the practice of jizia being collected from the Sikhs he said whatever is happening in Pakistan in the name of Islam and Taliban is not permitted by Islam. Several news reports from Pakistan last week say self-styled Islamist Taliban are forcing hapless Sikhs in remote villages of northern Pakistan, now in the control of Taliban, to pay them a hefty amount of money as jizya, on account of their being non-Muslims.
The Taliban have resorted even to kidnapping in order to force the helpless Sikhs to cough up the huge ransom that the Taliban have demanded in the name of imposing what they regard as an Islamic tax on them, says Lahore-based Daily Times.
On the collection of jizia from Sikhs and Sharia law implementation in Swat Valley in the North- Western Frontier Province of Pakistan, leader of hardline faction of Hurriyat Conference Geelani said: “Islam doesn’t permit oppression and extortion. Every faith and religion has full freedom, as per Islam”.
Reacting on the development in Taliban-occupied Pakistan areas, noted journalist Yoginder Sikand termed it “horrendous development that deserves to be condemned in the strongest terms, as inhuman, barbaric and against all authentic religious values.” As Taliban claim to follow the Deobandi school of Sunni Islam, Sikand has appealed to Darul Uloom in Deoband (India), which is known as the headquarters of Sunni Islam, to issue “a fatwa branding the imposition of the jizya on the Sikhs by the Taliban and other forms of oppression directed against the Sikh minority in Pakistan by the Taliban as un-Islamic or anti-Islamic in recent years.”