Soviet war in the 1980s, the Taliban's strict Deobandi leadership suppressed the Salafi movement in Afghanistan after it first came to power in the 1990s. Following the 2001 US invasion, the Taliban and Salafists joined forces in order to wage a common war against NATO forces, but Salafists were relegated to small groups which were under the Taliban's command. The Taliban are averse to debating doctrine with other Muslims and "did not allow even Muslim reporters to question [their] edicts or to discuss interpretations of the Qur'an." Shia Islam Afghan Shiites were persecuted during the first Taliban rule. Most Afghan Shiites are members of the Hazara ethnic group, which accounts for almost 10% of Afghanistan's entire population. However, a few Shiite Islamists supported the Taliban rule, such as Ustad Muhammad Akbari. In recent years, the Taliban have attempted to court Shiites, appointing a Shia cleric as a regional governor and recruiting Hazaras to fight against ISIL-KP, in order to distance themselves from their past sectarian reputation and improve their relations with the Shia government of Iran. Following the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan, reports of the marginalization and persecution of Hazaras and Tajiks began surfacing. On 3 July 2022, in the rural areas around Balkhab District, the Taliban committed a series of attacks against the local Shia Hazara population, including the execution of 150 civilians after long torture, playing music and dancing in Shia Mosques, Shia seminaries, and schools before turning them into military bases, killing Hazaras due to their ethnicity, seizing homes and vehicles belonging to Hazara civilians, causing hundreds of families to flee to the mountains, and not allowing aid workers to reach them - which led to the deaths of three infants. Relationship with other religious groups Along with Shia Muslims, the small Christian community was also persecuted by the Taliban. The Taliban announced in May 2001 that it would force Afghanistan's Hindu population to wear special badges, which has been compared to the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany. In general, the Taliban treated the Sikhs and Jews of Afghanistan better than Afghan Shiites, Hindus and Christians. During the first period of Taliban rule, only two known Jews were left in Afghanistan, Zablon Simintov and Isaac Levy (c. 1920–2005). Levy relied on charity to survive, while Simintov ran a store selling carpets and jewelry until 2001. They lived on opposite sides of the dilapidated Kabul synagogue. They