- Girls enroll in madrasas after the secular school ban
- Some fear losing professional career opportunities
- Madrasas dedicated to the study of the Koran and Islamic texts
- The Taliban say they are considering the inclusion of secular subjects
- After the West retreated, a new government took power
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, February 16 (Portal) – In a cool classroom in southern Afghanistan’s Kandahar province, the birthplace of the Taliban movement, young girls pored over Islamic texts as the disembodied voice of a male scholar blared out of a loudspeaker.
Students take turns emailing questions to the student on the class laptop at the Taalum-ul-Islam girls madrasa, or religious school, where male teachers are forbidden from personally hearing the voices of female students .
Student enrollment at the facility in the city of Kandahar has doubled to about 400 in the past year as a result of the Taliban government’s decision to bar girls and women from most secular high schools and universities, according to staffers who checked out Portal Access to this was granted by the madrasa in December.
Other women’s religious schools across Afghanistan have also seen significant increases in enrollments, as Portal learned from visits to four madrasas — two in Kandahar and two in the capital Kabul — and interviews with more than 30 students, parents, teachers and officials in 10 provinces Country.
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“Due to the closure of schools, the number of students has increased by about 40 percent,” said Mansour Muslim, who runs a madrasa in northern Kabul primarily for teenage girls. “We now have around 150 students.”
One of the school’s students, 17-year-old Mursal, said she entered three months ago. While welcoming the religious learning, she said she found her situation limiting.
“I want to finish my schooling,” said Mursal, whose parents asked that her last name be withheld to protect her privacy. “I wanted to be a doctor later, but now I think it’s impossible.
The Taliban regained power in August 2021 after the sudden withdrawal of US-led forces. The new government has the declared goal of building an Islamic society based on Sharia law after 20 years of comparatively liberal rule supported by the West.
Abdul Maten Qanee, spokesman for the Ministry of Information, told Portal the government is not opposed to girls receiving secondary and tertiary education. However, he said there were several issues to be addressed, including the problem of some mixed-sex establishments, girls not conforming to some interpretations of Islamic dress and girls not being accompanied by male guardians.
“We fought for our ideology and our values for 20 years,” he said. “We are not against education, we just want rules to be followed and implemented and Afghan culture, traditions and values respected. We want women to have a modern education, society needs that,” he said.
Qanee said madrasas are open to girls of all ages. He added that a government committee is considering adding secular subjects to madrasas alongside religious studies, a development that has not been previously reported. He did not provide any further information on the work of the committee.
Women’s education is at the heart of the Taliban government’s standoff with the West. No foreign nation officially recognizes the government, with Washington citing women’s rights as the main obstacle to normalizing relations and unlocking much-needed funds.
The US State Department declined to comment directly on girls’ attendance at madrassas. Referring to the school restrictions, a spokesman said education is an internationally recognized human right and essential to Afghanistan’s economic growth.
“Islam proves us right”
The increase in teenage girls enrolling in religious schools, a trend the extent of which has not been previously detailed, often fulfills the need for learning, friendships and a reason to get out of the house, according to respondents.
However, some students say that these institutions dedicated to the study of the Qur’an and Islamic texts will not help them to fulfill their ambitions.
Madrasas, a part of Afghan life for centuries, typically do not provide the secular secondary and higher education needed for careers such as law, medicine, engineering and journalism – the kind of education still available to Afghan boys.
“I joined the madrasa because we couldn’t study at home and our schools are closed, so I came to learn the Koran,” said Mahtob, a 15-year-old student at the Mansour Muslim madrasa in Kabul. “I wanted to be an engineer when I grew up. I don’t think I can make my dream come true.”
Marzia Noorzai, a 40-year-old suffragette in southwest Farah province, said her nieces, who graduated from high school last year, now attend a local madrasa every day.
“Just to keep them busy,” she said. “Because they were depressed.”
Other students and teachers said Islamic education played an important role in their lives, although they hoped to study secular subjects as well.
A senior teacher in her early 20s at the Taalum-ul-Islam madrasa, to which Portal was granted access on condition that students or staff were not identified to protect their privacy, said religious classes gave her a sense of happiness and peace.
“Islam gives us rights as women,” she added. “I want these rights, not the idea of (Western) women’s rights.”
Asked about the trend of girls attending religious schools in larger numbers after the school ban, Taliban official Qanee said the number of madrassas had increased under the previous government and will continue to increase under the Taliban because Afghanistan is an Islamic country . He did not elaborate on the government’s plans for religious schools.
The previous foreign-backed government announced in January 2021 that it had registered about 5,000 madrassas nationwide, with a total enrollment of about 380,000 students, of whom about 55,000 were women. About a fifth of registered schools are run by the state, it said, adding that there are likely to be many more unregistered establishments.
Portal was unable to determine the current number of medreses, and the Taliban authorities have not provided figures.
“Options Evaporate”
Life has changed for many girls and women.
The Taliban government barred women students from most secondary schools last March and from universities in December. Days after the university’s decision, most Afghan women were banned from working for NGOs, leaving thousands of educated women unemployed and forcing many aid groups to partially suspend operations amid a humanitarian crisis.
The ban on secondary education alone has affected more than 1 million girls, UNICEF said in its Afghanistan annual report for 2022. This has exacerbated an existing “education crisis,” the UN Children’s Fund added, with an estimated 2.4 million girls already out of school early 2022.
Thousands of primary schools, some fee-paying, remain open to boys and girls up to around the age of 12, teaching subjects such as Dari, Pashto, English, math and science.
Madrasas themselves vary widely, from large institutions housing hundreds of students in cities to village mosques tuition for a handful of children. The schools, which are generally single-sex, also vary in standards, strictness, the number of days and hours they are open, and the fees they charge.
Fees for the madrasas visited by Portal ranged from the equivalent of about 50 cents to $2 per month per student. That’s an unaffordable price for many families in Afghanistan, where the UN says most people live in poverty, although some village madrasas are free.
Female madrasas usually have female teachers, although male religious scholars tend to direct their work in more traditional institutions such as that in Kandahar.
Ashley Jackson, co-director of the Center for Armed Groups, which has researched Taliban education policies, said madrasas cannot replace formal schools but are one of the last avenues of learning for girls and women.
“Opportunities for women’s education are evaporating,” Jackson said, adding that formal schools are viewed by some Taliban supporters as a symbol of international occupation. “There is a deep-seated mistrust of the formal education sector, even though it includes Islamic education.”
Not everyone in the administration agrees with the education restrictions. Four officials, who declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter, told Portal that they privately supported secondary education for girls and that Supreme Leader Haibatullah Akhundzada and his close advisers pushed the school ban.
Akhundzada, who lives in Kandahar and rarely appears in public, could not be reached for comment on any tensions within the administration over women’s education. Requests for comment from Akhundzada and other officials are being handled by the Taliban administration spokesman, who did not comment on the matter.
Additional reporting by Jibran Ahmad in Peshawar and Jonathan Landay in Washington; Edited by Mike Collett-White and Pravin Char
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