“Afghan” in Afghanistan: Idols in the Land of Idols

Abstract

A perennial anomaly in the academic, political, and popular discourse about “Afghan” and “Afghanistan” is the chronic absence of an informed and systematic engagement with the epistemology and semantic construction of the Persian identity label “Afghan” and its derivative use in the cultural, political, social, and spatial configuration of “Afghanistan.” This article offers a brief overview of, and a corrective to, this cultural and linguistic disposition. The essay examines the widespread use, the cultural and historical roots, and linguistic seeds of the ethnonym “Afghan” and its derivative toponymal “Afghanistan.” The essay excavates the Buddhist stance and the epistemological cradle of the Persian morpheme from which the term “Afghan” is derived. This exercise in the ethnology of Afghanistan locates the country and its people in historical “deep time” and in the context of several cultural layers and processes rather than a cultural construct in isolation. It aims to serve as a springboard for a corrective etymological awareness for the production of academic and political texts and discourse dealing with Afghanistan and its people.