The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) has commemorated the role of a Muslim woman in founding one of the world’s oldest universities, even as girls and women in Afghanistan continue to be denied the right to education beyond the sixth grade.
On Thursday, April 9, the organization noted that the University of Al-Qarawiyyin, located in Fez, Morocco, is one of the oldest continuously operating educational institutions in the world, having been founded in 859 AD by Fatima al-Fihri.
UNAMA added that the institution initially operated as a religious school but later evolved, during the golden age of Islamic civilization, into one of the most important centers of learning.
This comes as the Taliban, having seized control of Afghanistan, have not only stripped girls and women of their right to education, but have also barred them from public life and declared their voices to be “awrah,” a term used to describe something that must be concealed.
Nevertheless, the United Nations has consistently emphasized that education is a fundamental human right and that the prolonged deprivation of girls in Afghanistan threatens not only their own futures but the future of the country as a whole.
International and human rights organizations have repeatedly called on the Taliban to lift educational restrictions on women and girls and to create conditions for their return to schools and universities, yet these restrictions remain firmly in place.
You can read the Persian version of this news here:
تاکید یوناما بر نقش تاریخی زنان در علم؛ محرومیت آموزشی دختران افغانستان ادامه دارد
