Islam is the official state religion of Afghanistan, with approximately 99.7% of the Afghan population being Muslim. About 80-89% practice Sunni Islam and belong to the Hanafi Islamic law school while 10-19% are Shi'a, majority of whom follow the Twelver branch with smaller numbers of Ismailis. Some influence of Sufism may exist among both Sunni and Shi'a communities but this has to be researched further.

At the end of the 7th century, the Umayyad Arabs entered into the area now known as Afghanistan after decisively defeating the Sassanians in Nihawand. Following this colossal defeat, the last Sassanid Emperor, Yazdegerd III, who became a hunted fugitive, fled eastward deep into Central Asia. In pursuing Yazdegerd, the route the Arabs selected to enter the area was from north-eastern Iran and thereafter into Herat where they stationed a large portion of their army before advancing toward eastern Afghanistan. The Arabs exerted considerable efforts toward propagating Islam amongst the locals.

Afghanistan ⁱ/æfˈɡænɨstæn/ (Persian/Pashto: افغانستان, Afġānistān), officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming part of South Asia, Central Asia, and Greater Middle East, it is also considered to be part of a broader West Asia. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of 647,500 km² (250,001 sq mi), making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world. It is bordered by Pakistan in the south and the east, Iran in the west, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in the north, and China in the far northeast.

Afghanistan has been an ancient focal point of the Silk Road and human migration. Archaeologists have found evidence of human habitation from as far back as 50,000 BC. Urban civilization may have begun in the area as early as 3,000 to 2,000 BC. Sitting at an important geostrategic location that connects the Middle East with Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent, the land has been home to various peoples through the ages and witnessed many military campaigns, notably by Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, and in modern era Western forces. The land also served as a source from which the Greco-Bactrians, Kushans, Saffarids, Ghaznavids, Ghorids, Timurids, Mughals and many others have risen to form major empires.

Lara Logan (born 29 March 1971) is a South African television and radio journalist, and war correspondent. She is the chief foreign affairs correspondent for CBS News, and a correspondent for CBS's 60 Minutes.

Logan was born in Durban, South Africa. She attended high school at Durban Girls' College, and the University of Natal in Durban, graduating in 1992 with a degree in commerce. She went on to earn a diploma in French language, culture and history at the Université de l'Alliance Française in Paris. She married Jason Siemon, a professional basketball player; in 1998, the marriage ended in divorce. In 2008 she married Joseph Burkett, a U.S. government defense contractor from Texas, U.S.A. whom she met in Afghanistan. They live in Washington, D.C., with their two-year-old son and Burkett's daughter from a previous marriage.

Logan worked as a news reporter for the Sunday Tribune in Durban during her studies (1988–1989), then for the city's Daily News (1990–1992). In 1992 she joined Reuters Television in Africa, primarily as a senior producer. After four years she branched out into freelance journalism, obtaining assignments as a reporter and editor/producer with ITN and Fox/SKY, CBS News, ABC News (in London), NBC, and the European Broadcast Union. She also found work with CNN, reporting on incidents such as the 1998 United States embassy bombings in Nairobi and Tanzania, the conflict in Northern Ireland, and the Kosovo war.

Ahmad Shah Massoud (احمد شاه مسعود Aḥmad Šāh Mas'ūd; September 2, 1953 – September 9, 2001) was a political and military leader in Afghanistan. He was a central figure, known as the "Lion of Panjshir", in the resistance against the Soviet occupation between 1979 and 1989, fought against the alliance of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in the early 1990s, and led resistance against the Taliban regime between 1996 and 2001. Massoud was assassinated on September 9, 2001, two days before the attacks of September 11.

Massoud was an Afghan-Tajik Sunni Muslim born in the Panjshir in northern Afghanistan. He studied engineering at Kabul University in the 1970s, where he became involved with Muslim anti-communist movements around Burhanuddin Rabbani. He led an uprising against the Soviet-backed communist government in his native Panjshir in 1979. His role in the following period of armed resistance against the Soviet occupation forces earned him the nickname of "Lion of Panjshir" (شیر پنجشیر). Following the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan the Wall Street Journal named Massoud "the Afghan who won the Cold War". In 1992, he was appointed minister of defense in the government of the newly established Islamic State of Afghanistan by the peace and power-sharing agreement Peshawar Accords. He led the Islamic State's defense against attacks by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's alliance of militias which were backed by Pakistan. Following the rise of the Taliban in 1996, Massoud, who rejected the Taliban's and Al-Qaeda's extremist interpretation of Islam, returned to the role of an armed opposition leader, serving as the military and political leader of the multiethnic United Islamic Front (also known in the West as Northern Alliance). In 1997, he helped end the civil war in neighboring Tajikistan urging parties to accept a United Nations peace plan.

Zakir Abdul Karim Naik (Urdu: ذاکر عبدالکریم نائیک; born 18 October 1965) is an Indian public speaker on the subject of Islam and comparative religion. He is the founder and president of the Islamic Research Foundation (IRF), a non-profit organisation that owns the Peace TV channel based in Dubai, UAE. He is sometimes referred to as a televangelist. Before becoming a public speaker, he trained as a doctor. He has written two booklets on Islam and comparative religion. He is regarded as an exponent of the Salafi ideology; he places a strong emphasis on individual scholarship and the rejection of "blind Taqlid", which has led him to repudiate the relevance of sectarian or Madh'hab designations, all the while reaffirming their importance.

Zakir Abdul Karim Naik was born on 18 October 1965 in Mumbai, India. He attended St. Peter's High School in Mumbai. Later he enrolled at Kishinchand Chellaram College, before studying medicine at Topiwala National Medical College and Nair Hospital and later the University of Mumbai, where he obtained a Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery (MBBS). His wife, Farhat Naik, works for the women's section of the IRF.