Conflict of Remarks and Actions
The Taliban’s deputy Prime Minister, Abdul Kabir in a meeting with the UN deputy head, Markus Potzel said that the Islamic Emirate is not against the education of girls.
These remarks are in conflict with the actions and even statements of some other officials of the caretaker government.
Several Taliban officials have appeared in public and criticized the closure of girls’ schools. However, some of them, who are closed to the supreme leader, (Emir) Hibatullah Akhundzada have reflected their strict stance against girls’ access to education.
The de facto government deputy Foreign Minister, Sher Mohammad Abas Stanekzai is one of those critics among the Taliban, who has stressed on reopening of schools above grade six for girls in Afghanistan.
Stanekzai called closure of girls’ schools in contradict with the Islamic values and termed education as obligation for men and women.
“Education is obligator for men and women. The Ulema (clerics) are present here. No one can defy that education is obligatory. It (education) is decisively obligatory for men and women,” Stanekzai told a gathering in capital Kabul.
But the acting Minister of Vice and Virtue, Mohammad Khalid Hanafi denied that education is obligatory for men and women.
Hanafi downplayed the education as an obligation for men and women and described it as worldly and non-worldly sciences.
“Everywhere, you see, there are arguments about education. Well, education is a permissible action. This is a scientific issue. The worldly education is a permissible issue,” Hanafi said.
Earlier, the former acting Education Minister, Noorullah Munir defended the closure of schools for girls’ students in grade 7-12, saying that schools are closed due to cultural and traditional codes of the Afghan people.
He claimed that the people don’t want their daughters to go to schools.
“If you go out of the Urozgan market and ask from the elders you will understand the issue; or if you ask the elders at a mosque that how many people are ready to send their 16 or 17 years old daughters to schools. Then you will not need to ask me this question. It means, we have lived in Afghan society, and we know the culture here and this is something that the (previous) governments have not considered,” Munir said.
The sources said that the closure of schools for girls student has split the Taliban’s leadership into two parts.
In December 2022, the US Chargé d’Affaires for Afghanistan, Karen Decker said on Twitter that “by cutting women out of humanitarian service and shutting girls out of schools, men in Kandahar are denying the whole country food and a future.”
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