New Taliban Chancellor Bars Women from Kabul University

THE NEW YORK TIMES: The new policy for Afghanistan’s premier university is another major blow to women’s rights under Taliban rule, and to a two-decade effort to build up higher education.

Women stand inside an auditorium at Kabul University’s education center during a demonstration in support of the Taliban government earlier this month in Kabul. | Felipe Dana/Associated Press
Tightening the Taliban’s restrictions on women, the group’s new chancellor for Kabul University announced on Monday that women would be indefinitely banned from the institution either as instructors or students.

“I give you my words as chancellor of Kabul University,” Mohammad Ashraf Ghairat said in a Tweet on Monday. “As long as a real Islamic environment is not provided for all, women will not be allowed to come to universities or work. Islam first.”

The new university policy echoes the Taliban’s first time in power, in the 1990s, when women were only allowed in public if accompanied by a male relative and would be beaten for disobeying, and were kept from school entirely.

Some female staff members, who have worked in relative freedom over the past two decades, pushed back against the new decree, questioning the idea that the Taliban had a monopoly on defining the Islamic faith.

“In this holy place, there was nothing un-Islamic,” one female lecturer said, speaking on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisal, as did several others interviewed by The New York Times. “Presidents, teachers, engineers and even mullahs are trained here and gifted to society,” she said. “Kabul University is the home to the nation of Afghanistan.”

In the days after the Taliban seized power in August, officials went to pains to insist that this time would be better for women, who would be allowed to study, work and even participate in government.

But none of that has happened. Taliban leaders recently named an all-male cabinet. The new government has also prohibited women from returning to the workplace, citing security concerns, though officials have described that as temporary. (The original Taliban movement did that as well in its early days in 1990s, but never followed up.) » | Cora Engelbrecht and Sharif Hassan | Monday, September 27, 2021

Afghanistan’s Shrinking Horizons: ‘Women Feel Everything Is Finished’

THE OBSERVER: The Taliban claim to have changed, but the crackdown has begun for women across the country

A member of the Taliban stands guard at a checkpoint in Kandahar city. Photograph: Xinhua/Rex
In two months, Parwana estimates she has crossed the threshold of her home perhaps four times. She used to leave early in the morning, for work that supported her entire family, and then go on to an evening degree course.

After the Taliban took over Kandahar, her manager told her not to come to work and her university hasn’t yet sorted out how to put on the gender-divided classes they demanded.

Many people have welcomed the calm that settled over the city after the war abruptly ended, but for Parwana, as a single young woman, streets patrolled by Taliban soldiers are filled with menace. “Now I’m scared to go out. I wasn’t before.”

“I thought I was somebody, I could do something for my family and help others. Now I can’t even support myself,” she said. “Women here feel like everything is finished for them.” » | Emma Graham-Harrison in Kandahar | Sunday, September 12, 2021

‘Everything Changed Overnight’: Afghan Reporters Face an Intolerant Regime: The Taliban promised to respect press freedoms, but the new government has already showed signs of repression, and has even physically assaulted Afghan journalists. »

What Is Shariah Law, and What Does It Mean for Afghan Women under the Taliban?

A Taliban fighter walking past a beauty salon in Kabul on Wednesday. Credit...Wakil Kohsar/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
THE NEW YORK TIMES: The Taliban have pledged that women in Afghanistan will have rights “within the bounds of Islamic law,” or Shariah, under their newly established rule. But it is not clear what that will mean.

Shariah leaves considerable room for interpretation. When the Taliban ruled Afghanistan in the past, they imposed a strict one, barring women from working outside the home or leaving the house without a male guardian, eliminating schooling for girls, and publicly flogging people who violated the group’s morality code.

The insurgents have not yet said how they intend to apply it now. But millions of Afghan women fear a return to the past ways.

Here are the basics of what to know about Shariah and how it could factor into the Taliban’s treatment of women. » | Daniel Victor | Published: Thursday, August 19, 2021; Updated: Friday, August 20, 2021

As I walk around Kabul, the streets are empty of women »

Afghan Women’s Defiance and Despair: ‘I Never Thought I’d Have to Wear a Burqa. My Identity Will Be Lost’

Outside a beauty parlour in Kabul last week; the burqa is synonymous with Afghan women’s identity worldwide. Photograph: Sajjad Hussain/AFP/Getty Images
Women’s report in Afghanistan [WR]: Global development [GD]
THE GUARDIAN: As city after city falls to the Taliban, women fear that the freedoms won since 2001 will be crushed

In a market in Kabul, Aref is doing a booming trade. At first glance, the walls of his shop seem to be curtained in folds of blue fabric. On closer inspection, dozens and dozens of blue burqas hang like spectres from hooks on the wall. As the Taliban close in on Kabul, women inside the city are getting ready for what may be coming. “Before, most of our customers were from the provinces,” says Aref. “Now it is city women who are buying them.”

One of these women is Aaila, who is haggling with another shopkeeper over rapidly inflating burqa prices. “Last year these burqas cost AFS 200 [£2]. Now they’re trying to sell them to us for AFS 2,000 to 3,000,” she says. As the fear among women in Kabul has grown, the prices have risen.

For decades, the traditional Afghan burqa, mostly sold in shades of blue, was synonymous with Afghan women’s identity around the world. Usually made of heavy cloth, it is specifically designed to cover the wearer from head to toe. A netted fabric is placed near the eyes so that the woman inside can peer out through the meshing but nobody can see inside. It was enforced strictly during the Taliban regime in the late 1990s, and failure to wear one while in public could earn women severe punishments and public lashings from the Taliban’s “moral police”.

After the fall of the Taliban in 2001, even though many continued to choose to wear the burqa in adherence to religious and traditional beliefs, its rejection by millions of others across the country became a symbol of a new dawn for the country’s women, who were able to dictate what they wore for themselves again.

Today, there are burqas in the streets of downtown Kabul but women are also dressed in an array of different styles, many mixing traditional materials with colourful modern patterns and fashion inspiration from across the region. » | Zainab Pirzad and Atefa Alizada from Rukhshana Media | Sunday, August 15, 2021

The Guardian View on Saudi Arabia’s Reforms: Not Just a Battle for Women

THE GUARDIAN: Relaxation of the guardianship system is long overdue. But more change is needed, and the credit for these reforms should go to the women who have fought for them – not Riyadh

The jubilation of women in Saudi Arabia was real – and understandable. Last Friday, the kingdom announced that it is allowing women to apply for passports, to travel without permission and to have more control over family matters – registering a marriage, divorce or child’s birth, and being issued official family documents. These changes to the guardianship system should be genuinely transformative. But celebration can only be partial when women’s rights remain so tightly constricted and the activists who have fought hard for such changes are paying so high a price.

Women will still need permission from a male relative to marry or divorce, or to leave prison or domestic violence refuges. The system needs not reform but abolition. Other laws still hold women back. And as Ms Saffaa, an Australia-based Saudi artist and activist, warned: “When women become equal to men, Saudi Arabia is still going to remain an authoritarian dictatorship that violates countless human rights.” » | Editorial | Sunday, August 4, 2019

Republicans Terrified That Their Anti-Abortion Crusade Will Cost Them 2020

Republicans from Pat Robertson to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy are terrified that the string of strict anti-abortion laws that Republicans are passing are going to cost them dearly in 2020. They deserve it. The Republican Party has no idea how far they are setting back reproductive rights for women in this country, and given the backlash that we’ve already seen, it seems likely that Republicans are going to pay dearly in the near future. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses this.

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Afghanistan Still One of the Worst Places to Be a Woman, Says EU Ambassador

THE GUARDIAN: Franz-Michael Mellbin criticises prosecution of 'moral crimes' and says Hamid Karzai's government has failed Afghan women

President Hamid Karzai's government has let down Afghan women, according to the new EU ambassador to Kabul, who singled out the failure to end prosecution of rape victims and other abused women for "moral crimes" as a particular "disgrace".

Franz-Michael Mellbin said that despite huge practical improvements in areas from maternal mortality to the number of girls in schools, Afghanistan was still one of the worst places to be a woman and a frontline in the global battle for women's rights.

Mellbin, who previously served in Afghanistan as the Danish envoy, declined to criticise Karzai directly but said the government overall had failed in its responsibilities to be a voice for women's rights, as conservatives opposed to women having any role outside the home gathered strength. » | Emma Graham-Harrison in Kabul | Friday, March 07, 2014

Women's Rights Supporters Condemn Saudi Arabia as Activists Ordered to Jail

THE OBSERVER: Supporters condemn length of sentences as bid by authorities to silence criticism

Two prominent female rights activists who went to the aid of a woman they believed to be in distress are expected to go to jail in Saudi Arabia on Sunday after the failure of their appeal against a 10-month prison sentence and a two-year travel ban.

Wajeha al-Huwaider, a writer who has repeatedly defied Saudi laws by driving a car, and Fawzia al-Oyouni were arrested for taking a food parcel to the house of someone they thought was in an abusive relationship. In June they were found guilty on a sharia law charge of takhbib – incitement of a wife to defy the authority of her husband, thus undermining the marriage.

Campaigners say they are "heroes" who have been given heavy sentences to punish them for speaking out against Saudi restrictions on women's rights, which include limited access to education and child marriage as well as not being able to drive or even travel in a car without a male relative being present.

In 2007 a Saudi appeal court doubled a sentence of 90 lashes to be given to a teenager because she had been in a car with a male friend when they were abducted and gang-raped by seven men.

Suad Abu-Dayyeh, an activist for the group Equality Now, said the authorities had been trying to silence the two women for years and their sentence "is unfortunate and scandalous". It marked a dangerous escalation of how far Saudi authorities were willing to go. » | Tracy McVeigh | Sunday, September 29, 2013

Spain's New "Fornicators"

GATESTONE INSTITUTE: The imam had threatened to burn down the woman's house because, according to him she is an "infidel" as she works outside of the home, drives an automobile and has non-Muslim friends. A court in Tarragona absolved him of all wrongdoing.

Public prosecutors in Spain have dropped charges of "advocating gender violence" against a Muslim cleric who, on April 2013, preached a two-hour sermon in Spanish, entitled "The Queens of Islam," during which he made a number of pronouncements about the role of women in Spanish society, including: "Any woman who wears perfume and leaves the house and walks past men who can smell her perfume is a fornicator, and every glance she gets is a fornication."

The case involves Malik Ibn Benaisa, a Muslim imam based in Ceuta, a Spanish exclave in North Africa where Muslims constitute about 50% of the total population.

Benaisa also said that women should be banned from wearing blue jeans and high heels and from leaving the house unless their hands and face are completely covered.

The comments, which were aired on Spanish public television, enraged women's rights activists and triggered a nationwide debate over when religious speech becomes abusive and crosses the line into "sexual discrimination" and "gender violence." » | Soeren Kern | Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Saudi Activists Face Jail for Taking Food to Woman Who Said She Was Imprisoned

THE GUARDIAN: Court finds women's rights campaigners guilty of inciting wife to defy husband's authority

Two female human rights activists are facing prison sentences in Saudi Arabia for delivering a food parcel to a woman who told them she was imprisoned in her house with her children and unable to get food.

Wajeha al-Huwaider, who has repeatedly defied Saudi laws by posting footage of herself driving on the internet, and Fawzia al-Oyouni, a women's rights activist, face 10 months in prison and a two-year travel ban after being found guilty on a sharia law charge of takhbib – incitement of a wife to defy the authority of her husband.

But campaigners argue the women have been targeted because of their human rights work, and fear that the sentences send out a chilling message to other activists who dare to criticise the repressive regime, under which women cannot drive and can only cycle in recreational areas when accompanied by a male guardian.

"These women are extremely brave and active in fighting for women's rights in Saudi Arabia, and this is a way for the Saudi authorities to silence them," said Suad Abu-Dayyeh, the Middle East and north Africa consultant for Equality Now, which is fighting for the women's release. "If they are sent to jail it sends a very clear message to defenders of human rights that they should be silent and stop their activities – not just in Saudi Arabia, but across Arab countries. These women are innocent – they should be praised for trying to help a woman in need, not imprisoned." » | Alexandra Topping | Friday, July 05, 2013

Barbra Streisand Criticises Treatment of Women by Orthodox Jews

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Barbra Streisand waded into one of Israel's touchiest issues on the first major stop of her tour of the country – Jewish religious practices that separate men and women.

Speaking at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem on Monday, the 71-year-old took aim at cases of ultra-Orthodox Jews targeting women.

"It's distressing to read about women in Israel being forced to sit in the back of the bus," she said, "or when we hear about 'Women of the Wall' having metal chairs thrown at them when they attempt to peacefully and legally pray."

She was referring to isolated incidents in which ultra-Orthodox men tried to force women to sit separately at the rear of buses that go through their neighbourhoods, as well as more serious clashes in which ultra-Orthodox Jews tried to prevent women donning prayer shawls and carrying Torah scrolls from praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, the holiest site where Jews can worship. » | Associated Press | Edited by Chris Irvine | Monday, June 17, 2013