The Taliban has banned women in Afghanistan from allowing their voices to be heard by other women, further intensifying its repressive policies against Afghan women’s rights and raising concerns among human rights activists that such new laws could isolate them even further, preventing them from engaging in conversation or forming support networks.
Taliban bars Afghan women from hearing each other's voices, in new edict https://t.co/bbE8qp7ic4 pic.twitter.com/h11gVPNOKP
— National Post (@nationalpost) October 29, 2024
Mohammad Khalid Hanafi, the regime’s minister for the propagation of virtue and the prevention of vice, said in an audio statement that women should refrain from reciting the Quran aloud in the presence of other women, according to a report by Amu TV, a Virginia-based Afghan news channel.
“When women are not permitted to call takbir or athan [Islamic call to prayer], they certainly cannot sing songs or music,” Hanafi said in remarks reported on October 26th. “Even when an adult female prays, and another female passes by, she must not pray loudly enough for them to hear ... How could they be allowed to sing if they aren’t even permitted to hear [each other’s] voices while praying, let alone for anything else,”
What a deranged culture
— GuardianOfTheWest (@markSA74) October 30, 2024
Hanafi argued that women’s voices are considered awrah, meaning they must be covered and should not be heard in public, even by other women. He also said these are “new rules and will be gradually implemented, and God will be helping us in each step we take.”
This new, bizarre, draconian rule came just weeks after the Taliban issued a new law banning all images or any depictions of living things from being published. It also came just two months after the Taliban prohibited women’s voices from being heard in public. It’s not known whether the new rule has been implemented and, if so, how widely.
The new edict raised concerns among women and human rights advocates, who argue the rule would go beyond prayer and further restrict them from holding conversations with each other, isolating them and minimizing their presence.
Propaganda
— Pennylane24 (@Pennylane240863) October 30, 2024
Since the Taliban seized power in August 2021 following the withdrawal of US-led foreign military troops from Afghanistan, the fundamentalist regime has imposed a series of harsh and severe restrictions on Afghan women, which are reminiscent of their first stint in power from 1996 until they were driven out after a US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.
Women in Afghanistan are not allowed to wear bright clothes, go to beauty salons, sing, leave home without a male guardian, and even look at men they don’t know.
Heard in Finnish radio: "Maybe the Afghan women should all just leave the country. Then the remaining men could grill their sausages by themselves in all good peace."
— Haitari Selville fella(@kakkaroolari) October 28, 2024
The mounting restrictions on Afghan women have led to divisions even within the Taliban itself, with some officials expressing concerns over the impact of these extreme policies on public tolerance.
A senior Taliban official even warned of the potential repercussions, fearing that should a viable alternative to the Taliban emerge, public dissent and resistance might turn violent.
