Kabul Orders Midday Prayer for Employees

This country’s new Muslim leadership Thursday ordered all government employees to pray daily at midday.

Coming a little more than two weeks after the formation of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, it was one more step in creating an Islamic society from the ashes of a Communist one.

The government has shut Kabul’s dozen movie theaters so Islamic censors can check all films, including “Rambo III,” which had been packing in more than 600 people at night at Kabul’s Khyber Cinema.

State-run television ended the decades-old tradition of Thursday night Indian movies, considered titillating in this part of the world. Women were ordered to cover their heads, legs and arms or risk flogging. Alcohol was outlawed.

Kabul, the capital, still lacks a police force, but it already has a Committee for Islamic Publicity--established to fight “sin,” according to the official Bakhtar News Agency. Looting occurs nightly throughout the city, but the government appears more interested in matters of the spirit than those on the street.

Yet despite orders and circulars replete with Islamic fervor, few people believe Afghanistan can become a fundamentalist Islamic state like Iran , its neighbor to the west.

The country’s numerous and fractious ethnic groups and tribes, its traditions of fierce individuality and the disparate strains of Islam that run through this landlocked nation militate against such change.

Its Islamic traditions are weak. And many of its people follow a more mystical brand of Islam than their Muslim brothers in Iran or the Arab states.

Even among ministers in the new government, which replaced the Soviet-installed regime last month, there is already bickering over the direction the country should be taking.

“This nation is not a fundamentalist nation. It’s not part of our culture,” said Abdul Haq, a key guerrilla commander and now minister responsible for security in the capital. “Sure there are some fundamentalists in the government now, but they will be thrown out. They are nobodies who’ve became somebodies overnight.”