Why Taliban prohibits girls' education?
by Nadia Khan
Through email, while having his first interview with a Pakistani newspaper since the puritanical militia were driven from power in 2001, Mullah Omar, the reclusive leader of Taliban, has responded to a tough question; "The Taliban earned international criticism for destroying the ancient Bamiyan Buddhas, closing down schools for girls and a strict interpretation of shariah. When you look back, do you think those were right decisions?"
His response about girls education has sparked a controversy and a real stir even among religious circles. Through his spokesperson, Dr Mohammed Hanif, he responded by email, "Shariah is sharia. A number of Muslims have been influenced by other civilisations and that's why they seem to find Islamic injunctions too difficult [to follow]. Girls schools were either too few or were non-existent before we took over. We were preparing a strategy for girls' education in accordance with shariah."
Briefly - in Afghanistan the Taliban movement headed by Mullah Mohammed Omar, is a mixture of former small-unit military commanders and Afghan refugees Madrasa students, who had studied at Islamic religious schools in Pakistan, primarily the ones established by the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI - F) and its splinter groups such as JUI (Sami ul Haq) groups. The Taliban ideology is extremely strict and "anti-modern" derived from the radical sunni Islamic sharia combining Pashtun tribal codes or Pashtunwali. They were based in the Helmand, Kandahar, and Uruzgan regions and were overwhelmingly ethnic Pashtuns and predominantly Durrani Pashtuns. They governed Afghanistan from 1996 until 2001 & became controversial for their treatment of women especially girls education denial and setting girls' school on fire.
With this context of Taliban interpretations of Shariah, we need to go back to the roots of Afghan culture, even before Soviets arrival in Kabul. The situation for women in the country remains unstable since ages. Sardar Muhammad Daoud (1909 - 1978), who over through the King of Afghanistan Zahir Shah, his cousin & brother in law, and became the first President of Afghanistan from 1973 until his assassination in 1978 as a result of a revolution led by the Marxist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), was known for his progressive policies, especially in relation to the rights of women, even though being a powerful leader he, “proceeded cautiously on the question of the emancipation of women. At the fortieth celebration of national independence in 1959, the wives of his ministers appeared unveiled in public at his behest. When religious leaders protested, he challenged them to cite a single verse of the Quran specifically mandating veiling.
When they continued to resist, he jailed them for a week writes Peter G. Blood.
Taliban seized power in such tribal-male dominated society in war-torn Afghanistan, lead by the warlords, and strengthens their interpretations of Shariah with the help of centuries old ongoing culture of the country which prevents basic rights to women - under the banner of conflicting cultures or clash of civilisations. This conflict was predominantly between the religious and modern educational systems, which Taliban sees later as a root cause of all evils. These cultural differences became evident in the mirror of women education, either as a teacher or as a student, as said by Taliban religious figures; “if a woman teaches [Quran] and she observes the Islamic culture then we respect her, but if she roles up her sleeves against Islamic Sharia, and if she wears make-up or wears flimsy clothes then that is not Islamic. Some women want equal rights. The rights in western culture. say Haji Abdul Rahman Tawakili, a fierce opponent of Mohammed Hanif
Atmar, the present education minister. If she adds English language learning to her students then she has to pay the price like Torpikai, now, who teaches English at Sayad Yusuf Elmi School in Kabul, is one of many examples of a teacher who has kept her resolve under extreme duress. During Taliban period, in the late nineties, she lost her job as a schoolteacher, so she started running secret classes in Quranic studies and English - in her apartment. She only informed parents about the Quran lessons but the local Taliban officials discovered her secret of English language and punished her by evicting her from her apartment. Hence education became the key battleground in the war over values that has characterised more than 30 years of conflict. In recent times this cultural battle has attained a new intensity when Taliban has been blamed, that in last one year more than 140 teachers and students have been killed so far all over the country.
Prior to the Taliban, half the students at Kabul University as well as half the government workforce were, women. Women comprised 70 per cent of school teachers and 40 per cent of doctors. Between 1996 till 2001, Taliban stripped women of many of their basic rights, such as they:
¢ Banned women from working in hospitals, schools, universities, and offices
¢ Closed schools for girls and barred women from attending universities both as a teacher or student
¢ Prohibited women from leaving their homes unless escorted by a close male relative regardless of her urgency
¢ Forced women to wear the veil (burqa) â€" traditional religious wearing cover women from head to toe, except for a small eyes opening at the face
¢ Beat and publicly flogged women for violating Taliban decrees
As per Islamic norms, men and women both have equal rights to seek knowledge, in addition to Quran and Sunnah education, especially in the field of medicine, education, computer or vocational trainings to help earn the livings. However, there were no religious seminaries for girls-only in most of the Afghanistan. Qari Abdul Rashid, a graduate from Cairo's infamous Al-Azhar University, when he established a religious seminary at the borders of Afghanistan near the northern hills of Quetta, to provide predominantly Afghan girls more than just a free Islamic education, he describes his difficulties as, “When I looked around me, I realized that there was nothing for these girls. They were not permitted to go outside their homes, even if the school was in front of their house. When the madrasa opened, I convinced the menâ€"mostly of Afghan origin from the Pathan tribeâ€"to allow their girls to study behind closed doors. writes Farhana Ali.
Years before, Allama Iqbal in one of his poetic piece, in which Satan is addressing his followers, while talking about Afghanistan, has said, Afghanion ki ghairat-e-deen ka hai ye ILaaj, Mullah ko un kay koh-o-daman say nikaal dou means for Afghan people, it is best to move out Mullah (strong faith Muslims) from their land. This has indicated the powerful influence of Mullah upon Afghan society. Ten years of Soviet invasion has also prompted Afghan Mujahedeen, mostly from religious schools, to fight back and keep their hold upon the land & society. With fall of Taliban regime and induction of present govt, with the presence of Allied forces, has fuelled a tussle between progressive forces, who sided by West and Mullah â€" a symbolic representative of religious forces in the country. This is because with modern system of education, the affect of Mullah on common men will fell short and education, especially girls' school, will have severe impact upon
the traditional Afghan society which is tied up with Mullah & religious fervour since ages.
For present Afghan Govt, besides looking at Islamic religious schools, the madrasas, as potential training centres for militants, they have to look at some point of concentration between the two modes of education: religious and modern, by broadening the madrasa curriculum so that it includes mathematics, science and languages, as well as study of the Quran and Hadith. Also, the religious teachers shall qualify for a system of education that fulfils today's need of education.
Likewise, the growing Talibanisation within the border areas of Pakistan & Swat valley has meant that girls' education has been under attack as it was under the Taliban regime in neighbouring Afghanistan where women's education was deemed un-Islamic and women banned from even being seen in public without male escorts. Swat is most badly affected territory where Pro-Taliban militant groups, have used varied means to sabotage women's education. Apart from the letters sent to schools, warnings have been issued over FM radio by a radical cleric, Maulana Fazlullah, a hard-line cleric turned militant Taliban commander and the son-in-law of the influential Tehrik Nifaz-i-Shariah Mohammadi's chief Maulana Sufi Mohammad, launched a vicious campaign against the education of girls.
In 2006, Fazlullah decreed that women should remain within the four walls of their homes and refrain from attending school. He also discouraged female health workers from performing their duties in nearby health facilities, and interfered with a polio vaccination campaign in the Swat valley. He claimed that the vaccination effort was "a Western conspiracy to make Muslims infertile so that their numbers could not grow."
During his nightly radio broadcasts, Fazlullah, himself received his intermediate education at the Government Post Graduate Jehanzeb College in Mingwara, routinely announced the names of female students who had stopped attending school and he promised them a high place in paradise, after death. "Girls' education leads to obscenity and vulgarity in the society. This is a conspiracy of the United States and other 'infidel' nations to deviate our younger generations from the right path of Islam," he said in one of his many radio sermons, which can be heard within 40-kilometer of his operational base, Swat.
Fatima, a teacher at a school in Swat, is extremely worried about present situation. “This trend of discouraging girls from education would hammer the last nail in the development of women, she said with great distress. According to her, the primary school where she taught had about 200 students two months ago. Their numbers had dwindled to 80 since then. An estimated 8,000 schoolgirls have dropped out over the past two months in the neighbouring villages of Imam Deri, Koza Banda, Bara Banda, Kabal and Char Bagh. Like Fatima, a widow in Swat, who was intermediate and worked as a school teacher to feed her three small kids, being threatened by pro-Taliban forces and finally killed yesterday as she refused to leave her school teacher job. “She was leading to obscenity and vulgarity to other teenaged women, said by Taliban spokesperson in Mingwara.
Female literacy rate in Pakistan is an abysmal 32 percent, 30 percent in the NWFP and only 3 percent in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) controlled by Islamabad directly. According to official reports, female enrolment in schools in the NWFP is 3.8 percent and 1.3 percent only in FATA. With this present state of girls' education both Pakistan and Afghanistan is moving into twenty first century â€" approximately 50 percent of their population forced to live in Dark Age of illiteracy!
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