Women’s rights will be subject to what “Islamic scholars” decide, a senior Taliban official confirmed.

A senior Taliban leader said the role of women in Afghanistan, including their right to work and education and how they should dress, will ultimately be decided by a council of Islamic scholars.

“Our ulemas (scholars) will decide whether girls can go to school or not“, said to Reuters Waheedullah Hashimi, who has access to the group’s decision-making. “They will decide if (women) should wear hijab, burqa, or simply (a) veil and abaya. It depends on them ”.

the Salvation it is usually a scarf that covers the head, the burqa is an all-encompassing dress, while the abaya it is a tunic which leaves the face uncovered.

The main spokesperson for the Taliban, Zabihullah Mujahid told a news conference in Kabul on Tuesday that women will be able to work and study and “will be very active in society, but within the framework of Islam”.

During the Taliban government of 1996-2001, also guided by Islamic law, women were prevented from working. Girls were not allowed to go to school and women had to wear a burqa when going out on the streets and only when accompanied by a male family member.

Those who broke the rules sometimes suffered public humiliations and beatings by the Taliban religious police.

Western leaders have said they will judge the new Taliban for their actions., including their treatment of girls and women.

“We will judge this regime by the decisions it makes, and by its actions rather than its words, its attitude to terrorism, crime and drugs, and access to aid. humanitarian aid and girls’ right to education“British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Wednesday.

“Afghans are 99.99% Muslim and believe in IslamHashimi said. “When you believe in laws, you absolutely must apply that law. We have a piece of advice, a very important piece of advice from ulama: they will decide what to do”.

Aberrations against women

The advent of a new Taliban regime in Afghanistan makes fear a further cut in rights and freedoms that could affect women, the main beneficiaries of the end in 2001 of the so-called Islamic Emirate, under which they could neither study nor work. The Taliban then applied a strict religious interpretation that basically women could not have any kind of public life.

For an Afghan woman, the difference between having gone abroad or, like most, having stayed in her country, is now all or nothing, living laughing or dying alive.

This is how Khadija describes her on the phone from her home in Kabul, frightened after the capture of her town by the Taliban, while asking for help from her sister-in-law Mina, a 28-year-old Afghan woman who has been raised in Madrid since. she was 7 years old and regrets not being able to do anything for her. “Die in life”, sentence in English Khadija, 23 years old.

“Tomorrow, I won’t go to college anymore. The Taliban are like animals, they do not understand the Quran. For them, women should not be educated. It’s over for us “, ends.

“They have already announced that women over 15 must get married. They don’t want us to be independent, they will kill us if we go out alone, or throw acid in our faces, ”denounces Khadija, who does not believe in the relaxation of the rules against women that the Taliban has announced concerning the government they led from 1996 to 2001.

“We want to leave Afghanistan, but we cannot. It’s horrible, ”says this Afghan student.

Infographic: Marcelo Regalado

(With information from Reuters)

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