Numerous videos have been circulating on social media showing Taliban-affiliated mullahs openly promoting misogyny and hostility toward formal schooling in madrasas and mosques. Some of these mullahs mock advocacy efforts and demands for women’s right to education in their sermons and speeches, declaring that a woman’s place is “first in the home and second in the graveyard.” Some of these mullahs have also stated that they fundamentally despise schools and do not allow their own children to attend them. One of these mullahs, defending the ban on women’s education, argued that a male doctor can even examine “inside a woman’s vagina.”
Since the Taliban seized power, in addition to imposing sweeping restrictions on women and girls, a large number of mullahs have been openly insulting women and denigrating school students in their sermons at madrasas and pulpits. Videos circulating on social media show that some of these mullahs have delivered such speeches in front of hundreds of people without facing any criticism whatsoever. This report examines only three instances of such speeches, in which women and school students were insulted in an extremely severe and offensive manner.
One of these mullahs, whose videos have been widely shared on social media, states that for women, learning “knowledge” is only important to the extent that they learn to respect their husbands and become familiar with the traditions of the Prophet of Islam.
This mullah says: “A woman should have knowledge only to the degree that she knows how to respect her husband, knows the traditions of the Prophet, and nothing more. Beyond this, it is not permissible for a woman to pursue education. A woman is the ornament of the home, not the ornament of a university or a school. For women, the first safe place is the home, and the second is the graveyard.”
Another video has emerged of Khalifa Din Mohammad, the head of the Taliban’s Council of Religious Scholars in Kabul, addressing criticisms about violations of women’s rights. He says, “They say that women’s rights have been violated. Women’s rights mean keeping her at home, providing her with food, providing her with clothing, and having marital relations with her.”
This comes despite videos previously circulating on social media showing him haggling over money for wedding ceremonies. Sources say this mullah currently resides in the Darul Aman Palace, and that Sirajuddin Haqqani, the Taliban’s Interior Minister, is among his followers.
“Mufti Mohammad Bilal Taheri,” a teacher at one of the religious seminaries in Nangarhar, says: “When women receive education, they will send letters to one another; this meaning is referenced in Surah An-Nur. Women do not need as much education as to go on to become masters or doctors. And these poor mullahs become so weak on this issue that they say, respectable Mufti, when a woman falls ill, you take her to a doctor; wouldn’t it be better to take her to a female doctor? Look at Mulla Ali Qari, may God have mercy on him: a male doctor is permitted to examine the vagina of a patient. You have forgotten religion and its principles.”
This mullah also states that he fundamentally despises schools, insults school graduates, and claims they are “symbols of indecency.”
Bilal Taheri says, “I have never liked schools from the ground up. I do not send my children to school.” He also references in the same speech the establishment of a course by one of his friends, and then states that he allowed his son to attend this course only to learn the titles.
This Taliban-supporting mullah adds: “The reason I dislike schools is this: look at the outcomes of schooling. When three thousand children are dismissed from school here, they are symbols of indecency. In the same way, all those who attend school are being led toward indecency.” He then asks those present: “Which school teaches half an hour of Quranic instruction so that I might attend? ‘Iqra, Iqra’ [sarcastically referring to the quality of the schools] has taken over the entire country. When students graduate from grade twelve, they cannot understand translation or hadith.”
These three cases are merely a sample of dozens of speeches by Taliban-affiliated mullahs that have provoked reactions on social media, while sources say this trend is continuing in a deeply troubling manner across Afghanistan, with a number of these mullahs effectively promoting misogyny and hostility toward formal schooling. According to these sources, the continuation of this situation will result in misogyny and anti-school sentiment becoming the dominant culture in society.
This comes after the Hasht-e Subh Daily previously obtained an audio recording of a speech by Hibatullah Akhundzada, the Taliban Supreme Leader, which revealed that he had issued an order to close all schools in Afghanistan, including both girls’ and boys’ schools. In this speech, Akhundzada compared schools to madrasas, stating that schools had corrupted people’s “morals” and altered their worldview, and therefore must be shut down.
Akhundzada claimed that schools were built in opposition to madrasas, and that the Taliban should build madrasas instead of schools and send their children there. In the same speech, he referred to “school knowledge” as “knowledge of the stomach,” saying he did not want such knowledge. In this speech, he says, “Mawlawi sahib, these are shameless people. These mercenaries are the ones destroying Islam. Doctors and engineers emerge and, with fees and money, they destroy the human soul. All of this is knowledge of the stomach. We do not want this knowledge.”
The Taliban have also published, under the order of Hibatullah Akhundzada, the Law for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, under which women’s voices have been deemed “awrah,” and women are permitted to go outside only when strictly necessary, provided they cover their faces and do not raise their voices. According to this law, even hearing a woman’s voice from within a home is prohibited, and drivers are banned from transporting women without a male guardian.
Furthermore, the Taliban’s penal code for courts, signed last year by the group’s leader, establishes the new framework for their criminal justice system, and its various articles broadly legitimize violence against women and children. Under this code, husbands are permitted to beat their wives provided it does not result in wounds or broken bones, and the punishment for such violence has been set at an extremely limited level.
You can read the Persian version of this report here:
از منبر تا مدرسه؛ ملاهای طالبان زنستیزی و مکتبستیزی را ترویج میکنند
