In Post 9/11 Afghanistan, debates about women’s rights, democracy, modernity, and Islam are part of the fabric of local and international development efforts to “nation-build”. The medium at the heart of the most public and politically charged debates, instigating often violent cultural contestations and clashes between “Islamists”, “moderates”, and others, is television. Enabled mostly by the international donor community and transnational media corporations, Afghanistan is experiencing a surge in new media creation with dozens of new television and radio stations, hundreds of publications, a fledgling internet infrastructure, and mobile telephone companies. After nearly a decade of the Taliban’s strict ban on media except their own Sharia radio, a vibrant though fragile public sphere has emerged in Afghanistan to provide people with a platform to talk back to local conservative groups and the international community. Afghan television producers face a range of constraints, threats, violence, and regimes of censorship for providing this platform for debate. Like the people of Afghanistan, they are caught between warring ideologies and political economies that range from “Islamist” to commercial to “developmentalist.” In this paper through content analysis of television programming, reception, and production studies, I will explore the complex ways that religion and religious experience are understood and practiced in Afghanistan.