Masooma Danesh, a young woman who attends Moortown Baptist Church, has brought to church these beautiful handmade bookmarks which were created by a group of Hazara women and girls in Kabul, Afghanistan. Masooma left her homeland of Afghanistan some years ago and has a heart for the women and girls in both her home country and in Iran.
We are currently witnessing an uprising by the young women of Iran against an oppressive regime. However, up to date reports from Afghanistan seems to have fallen from the news here. Masooma is particularly concerned for the ethnic Hazari women and girls who are persecuted in her homeland. Masooma does not seek payment for the bookmarks, but she has asked us to take a bookmark and to pray regularly for the Hazari women and girls of Afghanistan in particular, but also for the situation in Iran.
On Friday 30th September this year, a suicide bomber entered the Kaaj Higher Education Centre in the Dashti-Barchi neighbourhood, a mainly Shiite area of Kabul, Afghanistan, killing 23 people and wounding 36 others. 300 recent High School graduates had attended the centre on that morning to take their practice entry exams for university entrance. The dead and injured were mainly Hazaras and members of Afghanistan’s minority Shiite community. The minority Hazara community are historically one of the most severely persecuted groups in Afghanistan. The Islamic State group has carried out repeated, horrific attacks on schools, hospitals and mosques in this area and other Shiite areas in recent years. There have been many similar attacks such as an attack on a school in 2021 that killed more than 90 young people, mostly schoolgirls.