Clerics and religious scholars in the western Afghan province of Herat denounced the Taliban’s war and its vision of the Islamic Political System, TOLOnews reported. They said the Taliban’s narrative shouldn’t stop the peace process in the war-torn country.

The gathering of the scholar also rejected the Taliban’s ‘unilateral’ stance about establishing an Islamic government in Afghanistan. Only Afghan scholars can decide on such systems, they claimed.

This denunciation is the latest after clerics from Kuwait, Indonesia, India, and other countries earlier questioned the religious legitimacy of the Taliban’s jihad in Afghanistan.

Clerics also said the Taliban’s war has no justification as the war is claiming the lives of innocent Muslims. 

“The war is no longer justified, it has no meaning now, we must surrender to peace. The war is imposed on us by others, we all know it, the entire nation knows about it,” Mawlawi Khudadad

Saleh, the head of the Herat Clerical Council, was quoted as saying by TOLOnews.

Taliban draws its legitimacy from rural populations, by projecting the Afghan Government as non-Islamic, corrupt, and imposed ‘puppet of the west.’ The often limited outreach of governance in rural and remote areas helped the insurgent group to take roots. 

The Afghan government aims to dampen this legitimacy of the Taliban, which the group often claim under the cover of Islamic sanctity, by engaging with Islamic scholars and the influential groups around the world to question the Taliban’s war on Afghan people.