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CNN Saturday Morning News
Afghan Mullah Has History of Dissent Against Taliban
Aired December 15, 2001 - 09:25 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Certainly there are Americans who'd prefer bin Laden and Omar be taken dead rather than alive, but that's not what most Muslim clerics are saying.
However, as CNN's Jason Bellini now tells us, a minister of the Taliban kept from giving any sermons is now preaching that Omar should be hanged. Here's Jason Bellini and his report from Kabul.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JASON BELLINI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Mullah Arouf's (ph) homecoming. For 18 months, the Taliban locked him out of his mosque. He and the Taliban had issues. For one, he refused to acknowledge Mullah Omar as the leader of the faithfuls in his Friday sermons, a weekly insult.
(on camera): I'm told that he's not afraid to say whatever he wants to say.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Never, never is afraid, never, never, never.
BELLINI: He says whatever he wants to say?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Whatever he wants to say, but he wants to say the right thing, not the wrong thing.
BELLINI (voice-over): For another thing, he'd argue that Taliban policies ran counter to Islam. They didn't like that either.
"They told us that our society was like the Prophet Mohammed's, but they didn't make it the same," he says. "Mohammed never hit women or the wives of other people. He never punished the youth."
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's a very holy person to me and for everybody. Everybody knows him in this country.
BELLINI (on camera): Why is there so much admiration for you? Why do you think?
(voice-over): "Whenever I say hello to anyone, I stop and get off my bicycle, because they shouldn't think I have a bicycle and they haven't got one," says the mullah. "Our Prophet Mohammed says we should be good to all people. Our people are so poor. If you just say hello to them, it makes them happy." (on camera): Mullah Abdul Arouf has been a mullah here in Kabul for 22 years. All during those 22 years, Afghanistan has been at war. I asked the mullah, What was the happiest time he can remember? He said to me, "Now is the happiest time."
(voice-over): Before the Taliban, it was the communists who wanted to shut him up. "I told everyone in the mosque that we have the best religion. Our fathers and our mothers are Muslim. Don't go and become Communists, don't leave your religion."
He can still show his scars from Communist torture.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Every, every, every Friday he was fighting in the mosque, every Friday.
BELLINI (on camera): Was he fighting with a Kalashnikov?
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: No, with his tongue, with his mouth, with his idea, with his mind, with his purpose, with his clean heart.
BELLINI (voice-over): The mullah believes knowledge, broad knowledge, must inform his interpretations of the Koran. He says the Taliban's biggest problem was their ignorance.
"God is the God of people people of the world. It doesn't say that God is the God of just Muslims. God belongs to all of us."
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: God is God, you know, you know God is God, you know. So maybe he know more than us. Maybe he know more than everybody. So that's why the God save him, otherwise he would have been killed, or otherwise he would have been jailed.
BELLINI (on camera): Afghanistan's a very young country. There's so many children here who've grown up under the Taliban. What do you think the Taliban's brand of Islam is doing to the faith of these children?
(voice-over): Mullah Arouf responds that the Taliban didn't know what they were teaching. "They couldn't even teach two students properly," he says.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: He is our mullah, but is real mullah. One is wrong mullah, one is real mullah. He is a real mullah.
BELLINI: As times and regimes change, Mullah Arouf stays the same outspoken mullah. I asked him, how has he kept his faith through a lifetime of turmoil?
"The faith and trust of a Muslim," he says, "doesn't depend on present conditions. Any kind of condition will move on."
Real mullahs never give up.
Jason Bellini, CNN, Kabul, Afghanistan.
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