The AP reported on a promising development. A Taliban leader says that girls and women should be allowed to get an education. But don’t celebrate until there is an actual policy change.
A senior Taliban figure has urged the group’s leader to scrap education bans on Afghan women and girls, saying there is no excuse for them, in a rare public rebuke of government policy.
Sher Abbas Stanikzai, political deputy at the Foreign Ministry, made the remarks in a speech on Saturday in southeastern Khost province.
He told an audience at a religious school ceremony there was no reason to deny education to women and girls, “just as there was no justification for it in the past and there shouldn’t be one at all.”
The government has barred females from education after sixth grade. Last September, there were reports authorities had also stopped medical training and courses for women.
In Afghanistan, women and girls can only be treated by female doctors and health professionals. Authorities have yet to confirm the medical training ban.
“We call on the leadership again to open the doors of education,” said Stanikzai in a video shared by his official account on the social platform X. “We are committing an injustice against 20 million people out of a population of 40 million, depriving them of all their rights. This is not in Islamic law, but our personal choice or nature.”
Stanikzai was once the head of the Taliban team in talks that led to the complete withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan.
It is not the first time he has said that women and girls deserve to have an education. He made similar remarks in September 2022, a year after schools closed for girls and months and before the introduction of a university ban.
Think about it: in Afghanistan, women can be treated only by female doctors, but women are not permitted to study beyond sixth grade. How can women get any healthcare if women are not allowed to study and become doctors?
Don’t the Taliban care about the well-being of their mothers, their sisters, their daughters?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The way women are treated in Afghanistan amounts to a crime against humanity. The women are required to walk around in mini tents and are reduced to tenth rate non-citizens. The Taliban appear to fear and hate women, what the hell is their problem. It was a woman who was good enough to give birth to these knuckleheads, show some damn respect to your mothers, sisters, aunts, nieces, grandmothers, etc.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Always remember that religions were invented by men FOR men.
LikeLike
Women in this country can get an education and work in a field commensurate with their education, but they still lag in pay behind male peers in similar positions. Now that a woman’s right to choose has been crushed by “The Supremes,” women’s reproductive care depends on the politics of their states. Biden declared that women have equal rights in this country. It remains to be seen if this proclamation will hold in this administration, or will “The Supremes” will find some horse and buggy law to squelch it?
LikeLike
See. . . the CONVICTED FELON so scares the Taliban that they are backtracking on their reactionary Islamic faith beliefs. Isn’t he great?
LikeLike
“A senior Taliban figure. . . in a rare public rebuke of government policy. “
He’ll be killed soon. That’s what happens when one’s faith belief system is based on Abrahamic mythologies.
LikeLike
In a word, “No”.
LikeLike