It did not take long for Taliban to show their ugly face, proving wrong those who were optimistic about their rule.
In December, Taliban leaders instructed school directors and local community leaders that women can no longer attend or work at schools and universities. The decision of the extremist group is the latest item on a long list of similar policies targeting to bury women and girls alive under the claim of “protecting society against vice.” Banning women from participating in public life is at the core of the extremist ideology adopted by Islamist extremist organizations, including Taliban.
Forcing women to cover from head to toe, stoning women in public, and preventing women from participating in public life through work or education were daily practices under the rule of the former Taliban. Sadly, the new Taliban is gradually heading in that direction by first banning women from working at certain occupations, now preventing women from education, and very soon preventing women from going to markets or appearing in public.
In response to Taliban’s appalling move, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Sheikh Ahmed El-Tayib, issued a statement harshly condemning the systemic discrimination against women in Afghanistan. “Preventing the Afghan girls from university-level education is a shocking procedure that contradicts Islamic Shariah;” El-Tayib stated. “Shariah explicitly urges men and women to continue to seek education from cradle to grave. Several women have proven their scientific and political genius over the long history of Islam. Women’s education should be a source of pride and admiration for every Muslim devoted to Allah, His Messenger, and His Shariah.”
Taliban took power in August 2021, following the hasty and chaotic withdrawal of the United States and allied forces from Afghanistan and the inevitable surrender of the Afghan army and the government. At the beginning of their shockingly effortless ascendance to power, the extremist group’s spokesperson told the media that they would not practice discrimination against women similar to their founding fathers who dominated the country in the 1990s and 2000s. They even claimed that the new Taliban is more “open-minded.”
Some western politicians and observers had fallen easy prey to Taliban’s false claims, perhaps out of ignorance of the nature of their ideology. The U.S. Administration of President Biden urged the international community to give Taliban a chance under the assumption that “the new Taliban is different from the old Taliban” and that Taliban’s rule is what the Afghan people want. The hundreds of thousands of Afghans who fled the country, during the past year since Taliban took power, offer living proof of the falseness of these relaxed claims by international community leaders.
Among all the shocking statements made by world leaders, such as the European Union and UNICEF, about their optimism toward Taliban’s rule in Afghanistan, one particular statement stood out. In an interview with Sky News TV, a few days following the U.S. and allied forces' withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Chief of Staff of the British Army, Nick Carter, described Taliban fighters as “country boys” that the world needs to be patient on and give them a chance to prove that they are “more reasonable” than the old Taliban.
Taliban’s unapologetic discrimination against women is proving wrong the claims of officials and media personnel who were so optimistic that the current Taliban is different from the former Taliban, which in the 1990s turned Afghanistan into a safe haven for Al-Qaeda, one of the most dangerous Islamist terrorist organizations known in history. Sooner or later, the new Taliban will follow the steps of their ancestors and grow as a threat to the security of other countries in the east and the west. It all starts by suppressing women under the passive watch of the free world.