Kabul: The Taliban’s acting deputy foreign minister called on its senior leadership to open schools for Afghan girls, amid the sharpest public condemnation of a policy that has contributed to its rulers’ international isolation.
In a speech over the weekend, Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanakzai, who leads a team of negotiators at the Taliban’s political office in Doha ahead of the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan in 2021, said restrictions on girls’ and women’s education were a violation of Islamic Sharia law. are not compatible. .
“We request the leaders of the Islamic Emirate to open the doors of education,” he said, according to a local broadcaster. ToolReferring to the name of the Taliban for its administration.
He said that the doors of knowledge were open to both men and women during the time of the Holy Prophet.
“Today, out of a population of forty million, we are doing injustice to twenty million people,” he added, referring to Afghanistan’s female population.
The comments were among the most severe public criticism of the school closures by a Taliban official in recent years, which As Taliban sources and diplomats have said before. Reuters Despite some internal dissension, he was replaced by Supreme Spiritual Leader Haibatullah Akhundzada.
The Taliban have said they respect women’s rights according to Islamic law and their interpretation of Afghan culture.
He made a quick U-turn on promises to open high schools for girls in 2022, and has since said he is working on a plan to reopen schools but has not given a timeline. They closed universities for female students at the end of 2022.
These policies have been widely criticized internationally, including by Islamic scholars, and Western diplomats have said that any path to formal recognition of the Taliban is blocked as far as women are concerned. There is no change in their policies.
A spokesman for the Taliban administration in the southern city of Kandahar, where Haibatullah is based, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Stanakzai’s remarks.
