Via BBC:
The last decade has seen a little-reported but systematic campaign by insurgents to silence Afghan clerics who disagree with their tactics and ideology.
More than 800 religious scholars who confronted the Taliban by calling their insurgency un-Islamic and unlawful have been killed.
The most recent killing took place a week ago when prominent religious scholar Maulawi Ata Muhammad was shot dead in Kandahar. He was head of programming for local radio station, Voice of Islam.
Some targets are very high profile. Among the first to be killed in this way was, Maulawi Abdullah Fayaz, head of the Kandahar religious scholars council, in May 2005.
The Taliban – a word which actually means religious student – have accepted responsibility for a number of these killings. Indeed, many of those killed either taught or influenced the men who went on to join the Taliban – in effect these students are now murdering their teachers.
The militants describe themselves as being at the vanguard defending Afghanistan’s “original Islamic values”. They accuse anti-Taliban clerics of justifying “foreign occupation and creating discord within the Muslim community”.