The Afghan government quietly dumped more than 1,000 Shiite texts and other books from Iran into a river after a local governor complained that their content insulted the country's Sunni majority."It is a humiliation for all Shiites," said Mohammad Akbari, a prominent Shiite member of parliament. He said a joint commission of Sunni and Shiite leaders should have reviewed any complaints about the books.
Merchants who'd ordered the books for shops in Kabul said there was nothing offensive about their content and that they were destroyed simply because of prejudice against Shiites, who make up about 20 percent of the population.
About 2,600 history, geography and cultural books were destroyed, along with about 600 Shiite religious books, according to Sharyati and Ahmadi, a bookseller who had ordered the Shiite texts. Ahmadi declined to give his full name out of fear of government reprisal.
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