The Taliban represent the worst of religious fascism that is drenched in extreme misogyny for the purpose of allaying their fear of temptations and achieving their fantastical desires to enjoy eternal Paradise, all at the expense of Afghan girls and women. It is imperative that the international community not allow this abomination to continue.
The bare-bones truth is that the Taliban actually fear females, because they are seen as the source of carnal temptations. The Taliban have been indoctrinated in the belief that their ultimate goal in life is to enter Heaven in the afterlife, which can only be achieved by being righteous, pious, and virtuous, and therefore, they must practice what is deemed a virtue while avoiding vice.
The sight of an unveiled woman in public is viewed with fear because she could tempt men to commit sinful acts. Their shot at Heaven would be lost. As a result, the public space—which is men’s domain and where men operate freely—must be cleansed of such temptations. Women pose such threats to “virtuous” men, even though their virtue is enforced at the hands of violent religious police.
This photograph taken on Feb. 25, shows Afghan burka-clad women and their children waiting to be inoculated during the “outreach vaccination” program.
WAKIL KOHSAR/AFP via Getty Images
In the 21st century, societies around the world are supposed to progress rather than fall backward. Since returning to power in August 2021, the Taliban have been steadily pulling Afghanistan back to their vision of the 7th century and the birth of Islam. Their regression encompasses an extreme misogyny so debilitating that suicide rates among girls and women have shot up. The Taliban’s imposition of a violent, horrendously oppressive gender apartheid is an unequivocal crime against humanity. What the Taliban regime is doing to Afghan women is beyond cruel.
But hatred and sexism alone do not explain their ideology, which is based on their twisted interpretation of Islamic law. A number of interrelated factors contribute to the formulation of the Taliban’s anachronistic misogyny, including their deep-seated belief in the physical segregation of the sexes; their view of women as the source of temptations and sinful acts; pure indoctrination in Salafism/Wahhabism by often-illiterate seminary teachers; and the powerful desire to control females and dominate society as the “superior” gender. The latter factor allows the Taliban to enjoy privileges and advantages in all aspects of life, including religion, politics, economic opportunities, and the sociocultural facets of Afghan life.
What better way to be dominant than to impose a totalitarian fascist regime that is cloaked in religion and set in a conservative patriarchal society?
The Taliban are a product of the war of resistance against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and the Afghan civil war that befell the country following the Soviets’ withdrawal a decade later. The Taliban first came to power in Afghanistan as the victors of the civil war in 1996. The United States deposed the Taliban regime after the 9/11 attacks in 2001, but the group returned to power in Kabul with the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.
During the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Pakistan, with help from Saudi Arabia and the United States, helped build up a force of resistance fighters, called the mujahedeen. Islamic seminaries proliferated in the Afghan-Pakistan border region, where young boys and men—mostly Afghan refugees fleeing the war—were recruited to attend.
These seminaries separated the all-male student body from all female relations, including their mothers and sisters. Not only were they physically separated from females, but they were also indoctrinated in the belief that females are the source of temptations and sinful acts, like sex outside of marriage. Further indoctrination in the ultra-orthodox teachings of Wahhabism, which is notorious for its misogyny, ensued. Combined with a Pashtun sense of patriarchy and a male warrior super-ego, these factors have led to the Taliban’s social policies of violent female subjugation, strict gender segregation, the burka-based dress code imposed on girls and women, and the rendering of the Afghan female population invisible especially in the public space.
Since the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan, they have outlawed female education and employment; women are not allowed to show their faces or even speak in public. The Taliban’s Ministry of Vice and Virtue has issued numerous laws suppressing fundamental rights and freedoms of Afghan females.
“The Taliban published a host of new ‘vice and virtue’ laws … approved by their supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, which state that women must completely veil their bodies—including their faces—in thick clothing at all times in public to avoid leading men into temptation and vice,” according to The Guardian. Also, “Prior to the new “vice and virtue” laws, women and girls were already blocked from attending secondary school; banned from almost every form of paid employment; prevented from walking in public parks, attending gyms or beauty salons; and told to comply with a strict dress code. Earlier this year, the Taliban also announced the reintroduction of the public flogging and stoning of women for adultery.”
The international community cannot rest while these horrors are being perpetrated against the women and girls of Afghanistan. New sanctions are immediately necessary against the Taliban regime to offer people in the country some hope of a better future.
Hayat Alvi is an associate professor in the National Security Affairs Department at the U.S. Naval War College. She specializes in South Asia, the Middle East, Human Rights, Islamic Studies, Terrorism Studies, and Genocide Studies. The views expressed here are her own.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
