KABUL, Afghanistan — Ladies lose worth if males can see their uncovered faces in public, a spokesman for a key ministry of Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities stated Thursday, including that non secular students within the nation agree {that a} lady should hold her face coated when exterior the house.
The Taliban, who took over the nation in August of 2021, has cited the failure of girls to look at the right solution to put on the hijab, or Islamic headband, as a motive for barring them from most public areas, together with parks, jobs and college.
Molvi Mohammad Sadiq Akif, the spokesman for the Taliban’s Ministry of Vice and Advantage, stated in an interview Thursday with The Related Press that if girls’s faces are seen in public there’s a chance of fitna, or falling into sin.
“It is vitally dangerous to see girls (with out hijab) in some areas (massive cities) and our students additionally agree that girls’s faces ought to be hidden,” Akif stated. “It’s not that her face might be harmed or broken. A lady has her personal worth and that worth decreases by males taking a look at her. Allah offers respect to females in hijab and there may be worth on this.”
Dr. Tim Winter, who’s the Shaykh Zayed Lecturer in Islamic Research on the School of Divinity at Cambridge College, stated there was no scriptural mandate in Islam for face coverings and the Taliban would battle to search out something in Islamic scripture that backed their interpretation of hijab guidelines.
“Their identify implies they aren’t senior non secular consultants,” he informed The AP. “The phrase Taliban means college students. “
He stated the Taliban function on the idea of textbooks utilized in village madrasas, non secular faculties, and that Muslim students who’ve been to Afghanistan throughout each durations of Taliban rule have been underwhelmed by their degree of spiritual information. “They’ve simply been so remoted from the broader Muslim group.”
The Taliban’s restrictions on women and girls have precipitated world outrage, together with from some Muslim-majority nations.
On Wednesday, U.N. particular envoy Gordon Brown stated the Worldwide Felony Courtroom ought to prosecute Taliban leaders for crimes in opposition to humanity for denying training and employment to Afghan women and girls.
Akif, who’s the primary spokesman for the Vice and Advantage Ministry, didn’t reply questions concerning the bans, together with whether or not any of them may very well be lifted if there have been to be common adherence to hijab guidelines. He stated there have been different departments to take care of these points.
Akif stated the ministry confronted no obstacles in its work and that individuals supported its measures.
“Individuals wished to implement Sharia (Islamic regulation) right here. Now we’re finishing up the implementation of Sharia.” All of the decrees are Islamic rulings and the Taliban have added nothing to them, he stated. “The orders of Sharia have been issued 1,400 years in the past and they’re nonetheless there.”
He stated that underneath the present administration males not harass or stare at girls like they used to do within the time of the earlier authorities.
The Taliban authorities additionally says it has destroyed the “evils” of ingesting alcohol and bacha bazi, a apply wherein rich or highly effective males exploit boys for leisure, particularly dancing and sexual actions.
The ministry is in a fortified compound close to Darul Aman Palace within the Afghan capital, Kabul. Ladies are forbidden from coming into ministry premises, a number of the guards who have been on responsibility Thursday informed The AP, though there’s a female-only safety screening hut.
Slogans on concrete barricades reward the aim of the ministry.
One reads: “The promotion of virtues and the prohibition of vices are an efficient technique of social order.” One other says: “The promotion of virtues and the prohibition of vices save society from disaster.”
Akif stated the ministry depends on a community of officers and informants to examine if individuals are following rules.
“Our ombudsmen stroll in markets, public locations, universities, faculties, madrasas and mosques,” he stated. “They go to all these locations and watch individuals. In addition they communicate with them and educate them. We monitor them and other people additionally cooperate with and inform us.”
When requested if girls can go to parks, one of many areas they’re banned from, he stated they’d be capable to if sure circumstances may very well be met.
“You’ll be able to go to the park, however provided that there are not any males there. If there are males, then Sharia doesn’t permit it. We don’t say {that a} lady can’t do sports activities, she will be able to’t go to the park or she will be able to’t run. She will be able to do all these items, however not in the identical means as some girls need, to be semi-naked and amongst males.”