Women in Afghanistan aren’t forbidden from talking to one another, the Taliban authorities’s morality ministry instructed AFP on Saturday, denying latest media stories of a ban.
Afghan media based mostly outdoors the nation and worldwide shops have in latest weeks reported a ban on ladies listening to different ladies’s voices, based mostly on an audio recording of the pinnacle of the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (PVPV), Mohammad Khalid Hanafi, about guidelines of prayer.
PVPV spokesman Saiful Islam Khyber stated the stories had been “brainless” and “illogical”, in a voice recording confirmed by AFP.
“A woman can talk to another woman, women need to interact with one another in society, women do have their needs,” he stated.
He added, nonetheless, that there have been exceptions in keeping with Islamic legislation, equivalent to these described by Hanafi that girls ought to use hand gestures as an alternative of elevating their voices to speak with different ladies whereas praying.
Women in Afghanistan are barred from singing or reciting poetry aloud in public, in keeping with a latest “vice and virtue” legislation detailing sweeping codes of behaviour, together with that girls’s voices needs to be “concealed” together with their our bodies when outdoors their houses.
Women’s voices have additionally been banned from tv and radio broadcasts in some provinces.
The legislation codified many guidelines the Taliban authorities has imposed based mostly on their strict interpretation of Islamic legislation since they got here to energy in 2021, with ladies bearing the brunt of restrictions the United Nations has known as “gender apartheid”.
The Taliban authorities have banned schooling after secondary faculty for women and girls, additionally barring them from numerous jobs in addition to parks and different public locations.
The Taliban authorities has stated all Afghan residents’ rights are assured beneath Islamic legislation.
qb/sw/rsc
