The Taliban’s history is marked by stark hostility towards secular education, and they have taken draconian measures to stop it. This opposition is more pronounced when it comes to girls’ education. For instance, during their first rule (1996-2001), they imposed a blanket ban on girls’ education, closing schools for young women and turning secular educational institutions into Madrassas. They also banned higher education for girls and barred female educators from teaching. The only exception at the time was the Kabul Medical Faculty which stayed open throughout their rule. Similarly, they manipulated the curriculum at both the school and university levels, prioritizing religious subjects at the expense of secular ones.
This aversion to modern education persisted throughout their insurgency, characterized by an unrelenting violent campaign against school settings, teachers, students, and staff. In 2006, for instance, they issued a layeha, or code of conduct, that not only prohibited working as a teacher in secular schools but also actively endorsed violent attacks on teachers and staff members. This led to a significant increase in the number of attacks on school settings. In 2007, for example, an average of nearly one student or teacher was killed each day, and by 2008, almost half of all schools in the rural Southern region had to be closed due to violence. The then-Afghanistan Ministry of Education confirmed that by October 2008, around 800 schools had to be closed in the areas most impacted by the insurgency.
Following their takeover of Kabul in August 2021, the history repeated itself. The Taliban closed all secondary schools for girls making Afghanistan the only country in the world where girls cannot get secondary education. They also removed modern subjects such as ‘civil education’ from the curriculum and introduced more Islamic subjects instead. They went on further and in December 2022, they decided to ban all women in the country from higher education and work indefinitely.
This hostile attitude towards modern education is also reflected in the book ‘The Islamic Emirate and its System of Governance’ by the Taliban Chief Justice, Abdul Hakim Haqqani, which is widely known as the Taliban’s current manifesto. It stipulates that women and girls should exclusively receive Islamic education solely from their male family members within the confines of their homes. Haqqani also opposes any modern education, describing it as ‘lethal’:
“Experience shows that immersion in modern, secular sciences is lethal, both for people’s beliefs and for their actions. The teachers and students of these sciences tend to abandon the Quran and the sunnah, as well as the sayings of predecessors and imams. They depend on intellectual reasoning and abandon the requirements of Islam. Indeed, the wave of atheism which swamped the government of Afghanistan can be put down to the dominance of contemporary sciences over religious sciences in Afghanistan’s educational establishments.”
Why do they hate modern education? This article seeks to shed light on the origins of this hostility and argues that this opposition is deeply entrenched in a multifaceted tapestry of ideological, cultural, and historical factors.
Many argue that this aversion to modern education stems from their religious ideology. The Taliban ideology traces back to Deoband Darul Uloom (seminary). Deoband Darul Uloom, founded in 1867 in British India, was an anti-colonial movement aimed at revitalizing Islam and opposing non-Islamic ideas. The primary objective of this school was to instill an ‘austere, rigid, and pristine’ version of Islam in Muslim youth. Therefore, from the very beginning, the school harbored a deep aversion to Westernization and Western education. These seminaries spread across South Asia following the India-Pak partition, particularly across the Pak-Afghan border. As the ideological battle between the United States and the Soviets, and later Iran and Saudi Arabia intensified, particularly following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, these Madrassas received enormous amounts of funds and support from Saudis, Pakistan, and the United States. This was because both the US and Pakistan needed a source of recruits to fight in Afghanistan and Kashmir, and the Saudis wanted to spread their version of Islam, Wahabism, in the region to counter Iran’s influence. The Taliban movement was born in these Pakistani Madrassas amidst a bloody ideological battle and therefore, it is highly influenced by Wahabism. Wahabism is another ultraconservative faction of Sunni Islam, bearing the name of 18th Century Saudi theologian, Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahab. This version of Islam is enshrined in Saudi law and practiced there today.
However, many scholars including John Butt who is a graduate of Deoband Darul Uloom argue that this anti-education view of the Taliban is particularly an Afghan perspective. The founders and scholars of the Deoband Darul Uloom don’t seem to share such hostility against modern education. The syllabus committee at the Darul Uloom in 1869, reduced the period of study from ten years to six ‘as a measure to provide the graduates sufficient time to learn modern sciences, if they wished, before they were too old to join official secular institutions.’ This hostility of the Taliban against secular education seems to stem from the local tribal norm called ‘Pashtunwali’ which is based on patriarchal values. ‘Pashtunwali’ is the cultural norms of the Pashtun people; a tribal code, a way of life, and a system of values that prevails in rural areas, where Pashtun culture overshadows central government authority and local legal structure. Whilst there is outright respect for women in Pashtunwali, they cannot play an active role in mainstream society for themselves, instead, they have to support males in upholding these patriarchal values. The Taliban is primarily a Pashtun tribal movement that first emerged from Southern villages of Afghanistan, where Pashtunwali is most pronounced.
Furthermore, the country’s experience with modern education, particularly in the last century, where secular learning has generally been practiced as part of an ideological agenda has contributed to the opposition toward secular education. For instance, King Amanullah Khan (1920-1929), inspired by the Turkish Ataturk, initiated the biggest education Westernisation project in the country without considering the local voices and stakeholders. This led to stiff opposition from rural areas and led to the King’s exile in 1929. Moreover, from 1970 to 1979, when a Soviet-backed regime was in power, the education system in the country was manipulated by incorporating elements of communist ideology into its curriculum. For instance, students started learning new vocabulary such as ‘revolution’, ‘people’s democracy’, and ‘rights of workers.’ Pupils began singing socialist anthems and telling their parents that religious beliefs were no longer in use.
Another notable instance is that following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, the US and Pakistan cooperated to develop new textbooks known as ‘J for Jihad curriculum’ filled with Jihad and anti-communist discourse for Afghan students. The new textbooks were developed with the help of the University of Nebraska Omaha (UNO), designed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). These textbooks were initially distributed among displaced Afghans in Pakistan but soon made their way to Afghanistan’s schools as Mujahideen began to gain territory. These textbooks blatantly promoted Jihad, militancy, and violence. Following are two examples from the third and fourth grades mathematics textbooks as follows:
One group of mujahideen attacked 50 Russian soldiers. In that attack, 20 Russians are killed. How many Russians fled?
The speed of a Kalashnikov bullet is 800 meters per second. If a Russian is at a distance 3200 meters from a mujahid, and that mujahid aims at the Russian’s head, calculate how many seconds it will take for the bullet to strike the Russian in the forehead?
Many scholars argue that these historical events feed into the current Taliban opposition to ‘contemporary’ education.
To conclude, the Taliban’s view has always been an overt opposition to secular education and more focused on a religious Madrassa-type educational system. There has been no significant shift in this view since the group’s emergence in the 1990s. They still view ‘contemporary’ education as ‘lethal’ and believe that it should be taught within the framework of ‘religious’ education. While some attribute this view to the Taliban’s religious ideology of Deobandi Islam, this article argues that a number of other historical factors have contributed to this. For instance, the top-down roll-out of secular education in Afghanistan in the 1920s, the educational system of the Soviet-backed regime, the ‘J for Jihad’ curriculum in the country during the Cold War, and the Taliban’s tribal code or ‘Pashtunwali’ are the main factors contributing to the Taliban’s stance on education.
About the Author:
Ali Ahmadi is an independent Researcher and a graduate of MSc Development Studies from the University of East Anglia (UEA), UK.