The Taliban have intensified their restrictions on Afghan women by prohibiting them from voicing themselves in front of other women, marking another addition to their radical measures against women.
Mohammad Khalid Hanafi, the Taliban’s minister of vice and virtue, said in an audio message last week that women should avoid reciting the Quran aloud in the presence of other women, as reported by Amu TV, a U.S.-based network formed by Afghan journalists in exile after the collapse of Afghanistan’s Western-backed government. “If a woman is not allowed to perform Takbir, how could she be permitted to sing?” the minister remarked, referring to an Islamic phrase meaning “God is greater.”
According to Hanafi, a woman’s voice is considered awrah, meaning it must be concealed and not heard publicly, even among women, as reported by The Daily Telegraph in London.
Hanafi, who is said to have close ties with the Taliban’s supreme leader, is on a UN blacklist and is sanctioned by the European Union.
Since the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan in August 2021, they have imposed a series of restrictions on women that echo the harsh rules of their previous regime in the 1990s, which included bans on television and music.
