May 06, 2022

Taliban uses religion to justify denying girls' education

topic:	Child rights
located:	Afghanistan
editor:	Shadi Khan Saif

Failing to provide basic services and ensure peace, the de facto, unrecognised government of the Taliban in Afghanistan continues to play the religion card to justify its shortcomings and suppress dissent.

Evidently struggling to uphold the gender-based segregation policy in academic institutions, the Taliban authorities have now evenly split the six working days of the week's studies among the male and female students.

As per the new plan announced by the Taliban-run Ministry of Higher Education, in the girls’ shift, no male student will be allowed to enter the university, and in the boys’ shift, no girl will be allowed to visit the university. Also, none of the female professors will be allowed to teach the boys, and in the case of the girls, only the older male professors are allowed to teach the girls in case of 'urgent' need. Separate entrance points have been marked for girls, who are also not permitted to go in the offices and departments of their male professors.

Besides the many problems with this plan, one of its technical glitches is the rush to adjust the long lessons originally designed for a week to be taught and learned in three days, which will undoubtedly exhaust not only the girls, but the boys and teachers alike.

Worse than that, it has been months that the girls above grade six in schools are forced to stay home because the Taliban claims it is 'working on a strategy' for the reopening of their schools.

It cannot get more insane than this. No clear reasons or justifications are given - mostly because there are none - by the Taliban authorities for denying the women and girls their very basic human right to education.

Anas Haqqani, a senior Taliban official, on Wednesday pledged that the girls’ schools above grade six would reopen following a grand gathering of the religious scholars. This was followed by Aziz Ahmad Ryan, the spokesman for the Ministry of Education, who stated that a high-level meeting of religious scholars is set to deliberate on ways and means to reopen the girls’ schools.

Senior Afghan educators - who have rejected the Taliban's assertions of making the girls' education more 'Sharia-compliant' - have defended that educating girls does not require a religious debate, and that the Taliban's Islamic Emirate should open the school doors to girls without any pretext or further delay.

The irony of the matter is that religious scholars in a number of provinces have already demanded that girls be allowed to continue their education, but no action is seen on the ground.

In its ninth month in power, the Taliban must stop using useless excuses to hide its failures and instead, with an awareness that the world is watching, listen to the Afghan people and reinstate their civil liberties.

Photo by Erik Mclean

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