Fawad Andarabi

Fawad Andarabi was an Afghan folk singer who played the ghichak, a lute played with a bow, and sang about his native land. One of his songs contained the lyric: “There is no country in the world like my homeland, a proud nation. Our beautiful valley, our great-grandparents’ homeland.” The Taliban, showing their commitment to inclusivity that Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the rest of Biden’s handlers so dearly wish them to demonstrate, murdered Andarabi on Friday, likely for the crime of playing music for pleasure, which is forbidden in Islamic law. As CNN’s Peter Bergen recently noted, millions of Afghans “have good reason today to be skeptical of the ‘kinder, gentler’ Taliban” that some of the perennially eager-to-be-fooled have insisted exists. Indeed, they do. But will Blinken and company get the message?

Fawad Andarabi’s son Jawad recounted: “He was innocent, a singer who was only entertaining people. They shot him in the head on the farm.” The Taliban’s ubiquitous spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, said he didn’t have any information about what happened. Most likely, Andarabi was murdered for doing what he loved, for aside from nasheeds, a capella exhortations to jihad, Islamic law forbids music.

This prohibition is not a manifestation of “extremism”; though widely ignored, it is based on the highest authority. While it is not in the Qur’an, it is in the Hadith Qudsi, that is, reports of Muhammad’s words and deeds in which the prophet of Islam is quoted saying that Allah said something. In one of these, “the Prophet said that Allah commanded him to destroy all the musical instruments, idols, crosses and all the trappings of ignorance” (Hadith Qudsi 19:5). In a similar tradition, Muhammad is also depicted as saying: “Allah Mighty and Majestic sent me as a guidance and mercy to believers and commanded me to do away with musical instruments, flutes, strings, crucifixes, and the affair of the pre-Islamic period of ignorance.”

Other traditions have Muhammad saying: “On the Day of Resurrection, Allah will pour molten lead into the ears of whoever sits listening to a songstress.” And: “Song makes hypocrisy grow in the heart as water does herbage.” If that isn’t enough to get you to throw out your old Led Zeppelin LPs, yet another tradition attributes these words to Muhammad: “This community will experience the swallowing up of some people by the earth, metamorphosis of some into animals, and being rained upon with stones.” Someone asked, “When will this be, O Messenger of Allah?” and he said, “When songstresses and musical instruments appear and wine is held to be lawful.”

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