Afghan women barred from hearing each others voices, in Taliban edict

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The Taliban have banned Afghan women from allowing their voices to be heard by other women, adding yet another restriction to their string of radical measures against women.

Mohammad Khalid Hanafi, the Taliban’s minister of vice and virtue, said in an audio statement last week that women should refrain from reciting the Quran — the holy book of Islam — aloud in the presence of other women, according to Amu TV, a U.S.-based network established by Afghan journalists in exile after the fall of Afghanistan’s Western-backed government.

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“If a woman is not permitted to perform Takbir, then how could she be allowed to sing?,” the minister was quoted as saying, referring to an Islamic expression mainly used by Muslims around the world, which means “God is greater.”

A woman’s voice is considered awrah, meaning that which must be covered, and shouldn’t be heard in public, even by other women, Hanafi said, The Daily Telegraph in London reported.

Hanafi, who is reportedly close to the Taliban’s supreme leader, is blacklisted by the UN and sanctioned by the European Union.

Since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in August 2021, they have imposed a series of restrictions on Afghan women, mirroring the severe rules from their first regime in the 1990s, which banned television and music. Afghan girls have been barred from attending middle and high schools and universities, as well as working in governmental and international non-governmental organizations or NGOs, over the past three years.

The group has further tightened social restrictions on Afghan women: beauty salons have been shut down, women are prohibited from leaving home without a male guardian, their entire bodies and faces must be covered, and female news anchors are required to wear masks on TV.

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Samira, a midwife who, like many Afghans, goes by one name, told Amu TV she has worked in remote villages in western Herat province for eight years, but Taliban restrictions have intensified in the past two months. She says the Taliban now forbid female health workers from meeting with male companions of patients, making health services even more difficult.

“They don’t even allow us to speak at checkpoints when we go to work. And in the clinics, we’re told not to discuss medical matters with male relatives,” she said.

Richard Bennet, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, who last week visited Canada and met the Afghan diaspora, released a new report on Monday, detailing the worsening human rights situation in Afghanistan for women, children and minorities.

The Taliban have imposed a litany of edicts, rules and policies that restrict virtually every aspect of women’s and girls’ lives, preventing them from exercising their fundamental rights, including freedom of movement, education, work, health care, freedom of expression and access to justice, the report says

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“Other provisions further cement Taliban control over the lives, bodies and behaviour of women and girls. Women can be punished for singing or speaking outside their homes, while Muslim women are instructed to cover themselves in front of “non-believing” women. Adult women and men who are not related are forbidden from looking at each other’s bodies and faces,” reads the report.

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