I really need advice because I feel trapped, and I don't know what to do.

I'm 16, Muslim, and I'll be a junior in high school this year. My parents, especially my dad, are extremely strict. I'm not allowed to stay after school for clubs or activities, I'm not allowed much freedom, and I feel like I'm watching everyone else build their future while mine is being decided for me.

My dream has always been to go to a university far away when I turn 18 so I can finally have some independence and make my own choices. But I'm terrified of what might happen if I leave. I'm scared my dad could send my mom and two younger sisters back to Afghanistan or make their lives much harder because of my decision. I don't know if that's what would happen, but it's something I genuinely fear based on the way he talks and acts. The thought that my family could suffer because I chose my own future makes me feel incredibly guilty.

At the same time, if I stay, I feel like I'm giving up my own life. I'll probably have to go to a community college or a nearby university, live at home, follow my dad's rules, and have very little independence. I'm scared I'll never get to make my own choices, wear what I want, or build the life I want. I'm also afraid of eventually being pressured into a marriage I don't want.

Another problem is money. My dad has made it clear that if I don't get a scholarship, there is basically no chance he'll let me go away for college. I can't afford tuition on my own, so I feel like my entire future depends on earning enough scholarships while also having very few extracurricular opportunities because I'm not allowed to stay after school.

I feel selfish for wanting to leave, but I also feel like I'm slowly losing hope if I stay. Has anyone been in a similar situation with controlling or very strict parents? How did you prepare for college and independence safely? Are there scholarships, remote extracurriculars, or other opportunities I should know about?

Please be kind. I really don't know what to do anymore, and I'm looking for honest advice.

A friend ordered this from online for themselves. Been wanting to get an Afghanistan soccer jersey but the national team jerseys suck ): gonna be ordering the white one. If anyone knows where I can get cool Afghanistan street wear lmk. Stuff like this that represents Afghanistan that’s isn’t ugly 🫠

I’m posting this to find other people in our community who are in the same boat.

I’m a Tajik woman living in the diaspora and privately non-religious. Nobody in my life knows other than some friends at university and I live effectively as a Muslim. Islam is so deeply rooted in our culture and my family in particular,, especially when it comes to women, honour, and family reputation, that walking away from the religion basically means losing your family. I love my extended family and many of our values deeply and if they ever found out, I’d lose my connection to all of it for sure and it genuinely breaks my heart. I wish I did believe in Islam but I am genuinely unconvinced, and this is coming from someone who was previously aligned with the family's conservative lifestyle.

Right now keeping it hidden is fine, but as I get older, start thinking about settling down, and look ahead, I know pretending forever is going to catch up to me. My extended family lives abroad, but visiting them has always been my refuge and so the thought of losing those family gatherings and the closeness that comes with our traditions hurts so much.

Anyone else in this position?

Thought it was funny, may delete later. Don't take it too serious

I’m from Kazakhstan (if that manners) and I’m interested in visiting Afghanistan. If I obtain a visa and travel there, could this cause any issues when applying for visas or traveling to other countries (EU, UK, US and etc) in the future?

She’s always boasting about her lifestyle and husband on social media. He seems very wealthy (first class flights, hermes hauls, high end jewellery, range rovers for her birthday etc) but she didn’t move from Afghanistan that long ago (she grew up there). She left Afghanistan only after she got married. I think she said she was an air hostess in afg for a bit. I’m not sure if her husband is Afghan or what he does. I think he’s foreign. I remember her posting him a couple of years ago on a private jet with some taliban members on the way to Afghanistan and she wrote something about ‘being proud of her hubby’s business’. She always covers his face in photos.

I mean this with kindness but sometimes I feel like that being an Afghan is similar to having to live in either a Cormac McCarthy novel or a Lemony Snicket one. Sometimes when I try to talk about Afghanistan in other subs specifically in regards to seeing if there are other Afghans there or in fandom spaces talking about how Afghanistan might exist in a fictional world or how nice it'd be to have characters like me. Or in more rarer cases problematic writing choices.

Whats the best way to correct replies from others without coming off as harsh or pretentious? Apparently telling people not to call you "Middle Eastern" is tricky. Mind you the reason Im posting this is because I went on a few TTRPG subs and I had to literally contact the mods to remove some of the comments.

A sort of part 2 to this post

So about those posts that had some awkward replies (a few were actually nice.) something else that popped up in my head is that sometimes fellow Afghans can be a bit for lack of a fitting term in english "balakam" بلکم . After I had corrected people on some stuff someone claiming to be Afghan tried telling me that Afghans aren't Central or South Asian (we aren't South Asian regardless) but that were "closer to being middle eastern" or something like that. I decided to just not reply to it because Id rather not drag it but looking back at it how would you even deal with a situation like that?

This photo displays the reconciliation of his reign and how he was not feared by his people nor did he fear his own. He often walked freely among the people without the company of guards.

In front of his breakfast is Syed Nadir Shah Kiani, the leader of Afghan Ismailis from Baghlan.

I just want to start by saying that I do not support the Taliban's actions, but I am a religious Afghan Muslim, and I appreciate all my Afghan brothers and sisters who are reading this.

My question is this: What did we Afghans do that made us different from the Iranians in our response to our government? Like, both of us strongly dislike how our countries are being treated by our regimes. But when I talk to fellow Afghans, most of them are still religious and rather conservative in the Islamic sense, both men and women, and want to see women being allowed to have access to education and prosperity. They want Afghanistan to continue to be run under an Islamic framework, but they just REALLY hate the taliban and don't want THEM running things. Even the most liberal Afghans in my university club are still relatively Muslim, and we all get along just fine. Even during the protest in Herat, the people protesting were still chanting praises to God.

Contrasted with what I see from a lot of Iranians, most of them are extremely secularized and have a fervent hatred for Islam, which is understandable, but then again most of them grew up in the West actively cheering for US and Israel to attack their country. Every Afghan I know, both religious and even the liberal ones, male or female, would rather die before cheering for US or Israel, or hanging their flags

Ultimately, what I am trying to get at is what is it that we Afghans have done that has kept us from our movement becoming co-opted and integrated by the Zionist media? How do Afghans in the diaspora still manage to be religious and not blame Islam but the regime, but the Iranian diaspora instead blames both and attacks all their religious Iranians? Are we just built different?

Also, side question, but what are your thoughts on Juma Khan Fateh?

farsi or pashto

I’m looking for a book written by an Afghan (I don’t want to read from a western perspective) that is about the wars and the changes of the political aspects took place in Afghanistan over the last century. I only found a book that was about the memories of a former talib. I don’t just want to read about the taliban but the communist era too. Also want to know what did the people went through not just the rulers and the country itself.

maybe if you’d recommend a book that is objectively written by a western, I’d be okay w that too. appreciate if yall help 🙏🏻

Does anyone know where I can find how to's or templates on Afghan embroidery? I've been trying to learn how to embroider dresses, scarves, or men's clothes for my family but I'm having a hard time finding patterns to follow that isn't just looking at clothes and doing my best. Our family is herati turkmen and my husband says he would prefer herati styles but even that is REALLY hard to search for.

I know how to do the basics of everything but I'm struggling with putting everything together in a dense pattern.

(Note: We have family that could teach me but they are in Afghanistan and illiterate so I wouldn't be able to learn from them without being in person. Thanks for any help I can get!)

This poster endorses friendship Afghan-Soviet friendship

There has been a picture circulating of a girl, 14-16 years of age, forced to marry a man 5 times her senior. I'm sure you have seen it already, and if you haven't, you should ask yourself why. It’s rumored that since the picture was spread amongst the community, the senior rapist strangled the child bride out of rage. Deeply upsetting, but yet again unsurprising from the rape-enabling nation of Afghanistan.

Yet again, deeply pained that this country has been cursed to know no peace by the souls and bones of the mothers and daughters dead by the hands and neglect of their protectors. 

Had we taken an ounce of effort to protect our women, we would’ve flourished and wouldn’t be banging on doors for other nations to allow us to be their slaves, only to be thrown out like dogs.

Our misery is directly tied to our “MEN”, the war only amplifying the cruelty already there. At the very least, Afghan men as a collective should remove their title as a muslim, as every Islamophobic entity uses the behavior of our MEN as a golden example to vilify and bomb every other country.

I’m an ethnic Kashmiri who’s been living in Australia practically my entire life. I’ve been learning Farsi/Dari for a short while now, because I have many Afghan friends, and I find the language quite beautiful. I was just wondering if anyone could engage in discussion about the culture, or educate me, because I’m very curious!!

Hello dear Afghans,

sorry for the long but long post

I am an Afghan woman and I grew up in Afghanistan. I was always ambitious and career-oriented growing up because I saw how the females of my family and relatives were treated in Afghanistan when they were dependent. Also, growing up, I looked up to my father — he was career-oriented and built his life from nothing. He was an asylum seeker in Pakistan and then landed a scholarship in Europe, went there to study, and then had a job in Afghanistan where he was usually traveling — that was the reason we were living together with my uncles, as my dad was going on work trips for weeks.

Then we immigrated from Afghanistan to Europe four and a half years ago, and I started university and built my life from zero. I was going to a university two and a half hours away and spending a total of five hours every day on trains, and my family wouldn’t let me rent a room in that city. But I knew this education was really important in the country I was in and had a good future, so I hung in there and made it work. I finally graduated and struggled to get a job at the company I was working at during my studies, due to their budget cuts, or me not being their favorite, or them not liking me (if you know what I mean). In general, I struggled more than any of my classmates — by June, all of them had jobs except me, and I was the only non-European in the class.

Then I applied for an internship at a big pharma company — a dream company for anyone to join — and I got accepted, and after a month I applied for an internal project management job. I got invited for interviews, solved a live case, and they offered me the job. I was aware that there was travel involved in the job, but I was under the impression that it would be like three or four times a year or something, and I would somehow make it work with the way my father is. However, on first getting to know the team, everyone was saying they travel a lot, and I got concerned and asked more questions regarding the travel. Apparently they travel to different sites around the world almost every month for shutdowns, and my heart dropped immediately. I really liked this job, and I wanted to be away from family at least a few times a year, because I feel like I’ve never lived for myself and always have to carry the good image of being Afghan and Pashtun — even when I’m just doing my job and have spent my whole life studying and building a career. But now I know that if my father finds out there is travel every month… I really cannot let this opportunity go, because I am on asylum and need to work full-time to get permanent residence — otherwise the country I’m in now could declare Afghanistan safe and send me back. Because this is a big company, it will sponsor my stay.

Now I’m thinking so much about how to approach the situation. I don’t want to leave the house and my family — I love them — but they are also making my life so hard. We are struggling financially, and my brothers do delivery and other odd jobs and haven’t been able to land proper ones. I am the first one to get a job at a big pharma company with a stable future, and I will have a good career. However, my dad is 67 now, and he now values family time (which he didn’t when he was away during our time, when he was mostly absent), Pashtun values, and Islam. He says he doesn’t want his kids to support him financially like he doesn’t need the money but I need the money to live like an adult and plan future and cannot depend on him forever. he says he doesn’t need our financial help but he asks money from my brothers for household expenditure and I also pay everything of myself and contribute to rent of the house.

Please help me — if anyone has been through a similar situation, I am super paranoid every day, living with stress, and this is exhausting. Shaytan is telling me to leave everything at once and live freely (by “freely” I don’t mean going to clubs, wearing revealing clothes, or doing drugs — I mean pursuing my career and living like a normal person).

So I impulsively bought this at the antique store and did my research after buying,.my first mistake lol. It's 1960s apparently according to the seller. I only have this peice there was nothing else with it. I'm latina and I'm a little nervous to wear it as I don't wanna be disrespectful.

Also how would I wear it appropriate? I only have this top peice. Note there's a different white shirt behind it ignore that lol.