The Taleban and Al-Quaeda are organisations based on a version of a religion.
All the leaders of all religions have started out by being self appointed.
(There is one exception as far as I know. He is the Dalai Lama who was chosen by some strange ritual.)

Religion is a form of mental dysfunction brought about by brainwashing.
All religions are initially propagated by brainwashing children into believing the myths. legends and lies that underlie the history of the religions.

Many religious leaders become despots where they dictate how their followers have to lead their lives.
As all religions are based on self appointed leaders, they are opposed to democracy on principle.
This is worth repeating.
As all religions are based on self appointed leaders, they are opposed to democracy on principle.

Many religious leaders present themselves as benevolent to gain supporters and possibly converts. They are often the ones who have be so brainwashed that they believe the stories and lies that they have been told about their religion.

The basis of most religions is the supposed existence of a deity. Christians use the term God, Moslems use the term Allah and Jews use the term Jaweh.

In a region where there is active opposition to those who wish to promote democracy, the way to undermine the opposition is to make religious leaders face the fact that their religion is a sham. They should be interviewed while recordings are made to show later on television and asked:

"When was the last time your deity did anything on Earth without any human intervention?"

Answers which are quotations from a book are not acceptable. The interviewees should be told that hearsay evidence will not be accepted as evidence unless the names, ages, addresses and occupations of three or more witnesses can be provided. Then the date of the deity's action with details of what the deity did must be included.

If the interviewee can provide a satisfactory answer, he or she should be allowed to go free. Otherwise a recording of the interview should be broadcast to the community where the religious leader set himself up as a leader. He should be detained until he asks to make a television recording which clearly states how he was misled into deceiving those he came into contact with. He must clearly denounce anything which he preached previously. Then he will be released one month after the recording has been broadcast ten times in the region where he lived.

As far as I know, there have been no instances of any deity doing anything on Earth during recorded history.

Background Notes
The Earth is one planet of one of trillions of stars in our galaxy.
Wherever we look in the universe there are trillions of galaxies comparable to our galaxy.
The universe apparently began 13.7 billion (13,700,000,000) years ago.
The Earth has been in existence for around 4.5 billion (4,500,000,000) years.
There are 31,556,736 seconds in a year. If the existence of the Universe is thought of as a year, the times since the beginnings of the civilisations since the universe began can be counted in seconds.
The earliest recorded civilisations began around 10 thousand years ago. (23.4 seconds ago)

(I am being polite here by calling religious based societies civilisations.)

The Egyptian and Babylonian civilisations began around 8 thousand years ago. (18.7 seconds ago)
The Jewish civilisation began around 6 thousand years ago. (14.0 seconds ago)
The Christian civilisation began around 2 thousand years ago. (4.7 seconds ago)
The Moslem civilisation began around 13 hundred years ago. (3.0 seconds ago)

What was the deity doing if anything during the 31,556,717 seconds before the Egyptians got started?