Taliban’s suppression of Afghan women inspires extremists worldwide, expert tells the Reference

The Taliban continues to complicate the lives of women in Afghanistan, as it recently arrested a university professor on charges of distributing free books to Afghan women in various parts of the country, after the educator had also torn up his academic degrees in protest against the extremist movement's ban on women's education.

Radio Free Europe reported that university professor Ismail Mashal was beaten by the Taliban for calling for women's rights, and that he and dozens of other university professors submitted their resignations in protest against the ban on Afghan women receiving an education.

Taliban tyrannizes Afghan women

The Taliban has taken strict decisions against Afghan women recently, such as depriving girls from going to school under the pretext of reviewing the curricula provided to them and making sure that they are free of jurisprudential violations from the movement’s point of view, in addition to accusing girls of not adhering to the Taliban’s decisions regarding the compulsory Islamic veil and not allowing the mixing of the sexes.

The extremist movement also decided to deprive university students of certain academic disciplines such as media, journalism and engineering, limiting their studies to the fields of literature and health care, and that was before closing the doors of universities in their face, just like the schoolgirls.

The movement also decided to prevent women from going out to public parks and gyms, and it set a specific schedule for the days in which women are allowed to go out for walks, in addition to preventing women from traveling alone without a mahram and assuring drivers of various transport vehicles not to deal with those women who do not adhere to wearing the Islamic veil.

Taliban's shifting attitudes against women

The Taliban’s decisions to prevent women’s education and prevent them from acquiring books and reading create culturally and cognitively fragile generations, which increases the chances of joining terrorist groups, undermines international efforts aimed at eliminating violence and extremism in the country, and threatens to keep Afghanistan as a center of terrorism in Asia for a long time.

However, the movement’s decisions against Afghan women were taken at different stages. After it took control of the government in mid-August 2021, the Taliban showed relative flexibility towards the status of women. This appeared in the first speech of the movement's spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, after taking power, during which he stressed that the movement would give women their rights to work and education and would not restore the manifestations of its first era of rule, but the Taliban soon returned to its old authoritarian oppression of women.

Taliban inspires extremism around the world

Regarding the reasons that prompted the Taliban to return to suppressing women as it had during its first era, Ahmed Ban, an Egyptian researcher in the affairs of extremist organizations, said that the movement first adopted a public relations campaign at the beginning of its rule as a new authority feeling its way to rule and that has problems with the outside world resembling a state of international siege. It wanted to gain the confidence and trust of international donors through calm talk that reconciles with the values of the modern state, but over time it seems that the Taliban despaired about support from the international community and then returned to a discourse consistent with the movement’s naïve beliefs about Islamic law and the tribal perceptions that wear the mask of religion.

With regard to how preventing women from education will impact the future of the country, Ban noted in a statement to the Reference that the Taliban experience has become an inspiration for all extremist organizations around the world and has become an example of injustice against the values of the state and the values of modernity, science, knowledge and personal freedoms. He stressed that preserving an environment with these features will reinforce extremism among new generations, deprive them of educational and emotional nourishment, and arm them with the same troubled environment.