Doctor? Engineer? As dreams fade, Afghan girls turn to madrasas
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[February 16, 2023]
By Charlotte Greenfield and Mohammad Yunus Yawar
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - In a chilly classroom in the southern
Afghan province of Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban movement,
teenage girls pore over Islamic texts as the disembodied voice of a male
scholar emanates from a loud speaker.
Pupils take turns to email questions to the scholar on the class laptop
at the Taalum-ul-Islam Girls' Madrasa, or religious school, where male
teachers are forbidden from hearing the voices of female students in
person.
The number of students at the institution in Kandahar city has about
doubled to around 400 in the past year, driven by the Taliban
administration's decision to bar girls and women from most secular high
schools and universities, according to staff members who gave Reuters
rare access to the madrasa in December.
Other female religious schools across Afghanistan have also seen marked
increases in enrolment, Reuters learned from visits to four madrasas -
two in Kandahar and two in the capital Kabul - and interviews with more
than 30 students, parents, teachers and officials in 10 provinces spread
across the country.
"Due to the closing of schools, the number of students has increased by
around 40%," said Mansour Muslim, who runs a madrasa mainly for teenage
girls in north Kabul. "We now have around 150 students."
One of the students at the school, 17-year-old Mursal, said she had
joined three months ago. While she welcomed the religious learning, she
said she found her situation limiting.
"I want to finish my schooling," said Mursal, whose parents asked for
her surname to be withheld to protect her privacy. "I wanted to be a
doctor in the future, but now I think it's impossible. If you come to a
madrasa you just can be a teacher."
The Taliban regained power in August 2021 after the sudden withdrawal of
U.S.-led forces. The new government has the stated goal of building an
Islamic society based on sharia law following 20 years of comparatively
liberal Western-backed rule.
Abdul Maten Qanee, the spokesman for the information ministry, told
Reuters the government was not opposed to girls having secondary and
tertiary education. He said there were several issues to be overcome,
though, including the problem of some mixed-gender institutions, girls
not meeting some interpretations of Islamic dress, and girls not being
accompanied by male guardians.
"We fought for 20 years for our ideology and values," he said. "We are
not against education, we just want rules to be followed and
implemented, and the culture, traditions and values of Afghans to be
considered. We want females to have a modern education, society needs
this," he said.
Qanee said madrasas were open for girls of all ages. He added that a
government committee was looking into adding secular subjects to
madrasas alongside religious study, a development that hasn't been
previously reported. He didn't provide further details on the
committee's work.
Female education lies at the heart of the Taliban administration's
standoff with the West. No foreign nation formally recognises the
administration, with Washington citing women's rights as a major
obstacle to normalising ties and unlocking much-needed funds.
The U.S. State Department declined to comment directly on girls'
attendance of madrasas. A spokesperson, referring to the school
restrictions, said education was an internationally recognized human
right and essential to Afghanistan's economic growth.
'ISLAM GIVES US RIGHT'
The rise in mainly teenage girls enrolling in religious schools, a trend
whose scale hasn't been previously detailed, often fills a need for
learning, friendships and a reason to get out of the house, according to
the people interviewed.
Yet some students say these institutions, which are devoted to the study
of the Koran and Islamic texts, will not help them fulfil their
ambitions.
Madrasas, part of Afghan life for centuries, usually don't offer the
secular secondary and tertiary education needed to pursue careers such
as law, medicine, engineering and journalism - the kind of education
that's still available to Afghan boys.
"I joined the madrasa because at home we couldn't study and our schools
are closed, so I came to learn the Koran," said Mahtab, a 15-year-old
pupil at Mansour Muslim's Kabul madrasa. "I wanted to be an engineer in
the future. I don't think I can reach my dream."
Marzia Noorzai, a 40-year-old women's rights activist in the
southwestern province of Farah, said her nieces, who would have
graduated from high school last year, were now attending a local madrasa
every day.
"Just to keep them busy," she said. "Because they were depressed."
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Afghan women learn how to read the Koran
in a madrasa or religious school in Kabul, Afghanistan, October 8,
2022. REUTERS/Ali Khara
Other students and teachers said Islamic education played an
important role in their lives, though they hoped to be able to study
secular subjects too.
A senior teacher in her early 20s at the Taalum-ul-Islam madrasa,
where Reuters was given access on condition it didn't identify
students or staff to protect their privacy, said religious education
gave her a sense of happiness and peace.
"Islam gives us rights as women," she added. "I want those rights,
not the idea of (Western) women's rights."
Asked about the trend of girls attending religious schools in
greater numbers after the school ban, Taliban official Qanee said
the number of madrasas had been expanding under the previous
government and would continue to expand under the Taliban because
Afghanistan was an Islamic country. He didn't elaborate on the
government's plans for religious schools.
The previous foreign-backed government said in January 2021 that
they had registered about 5,000 madrasas nationwide, with total
enrolment of about 380,000 students, of whom around 55,000 were
female. About a fifth of the registered schools were operated by the
state, it said, adding that there were likely to be many more
unregistered institutions.
Reuters was unable to determine the current number of madrasas, and
Taliban authorities have not provided figures.
'OPTIONS ARE EVAPORATING'
Life has changed for many girls and women.
The Taliban administration barred females students from most high
schools last March, and from universities in December. Days after
the universities decision, it banned most Afghan women from working
for NGOs, leaving thousands of educated women unable to do their
jobs and forcing many aid groups to partially suspend operations
during a humanitarian crisis.
The secondary education ban alone has affected more than 1 million
girls, UNICEF said in its Afghanistan annual report for 2022. This
has compounded an existing "education crisis", the U.N. children's
agency added, with an estimated 2.4 million girls already out of
school at the beginning of 2022.
Thousands of primary schools, some of them fee-paying, remain open
for boys and girls up to the age of about 12, teaching subjects
including Dari, Pashto, English, maths and science.
Madrasas themselves vary widely, from big institutions hosting
hundreds of pupils in cities to village mosques teaching a handful
of children. The schools, which are typically single-sex, also vary
in standards, strictness, the number of days and hours they're open
as well as the fees they charge.
The fees charged by the madrasas visited by Reuters ranged from the
equivalent of around 50 cents to $2 per month per student. That is a
prohibitive cost for many families in Afghanistan, where the U.N.
says most people live in poverty, although some village madrasas are
free.
Female madrasas usually have female teaching staff, though male
religious scholars tend to guide their work in more traditional
institutions like the one in Kandahar.
Ashley Jackson, co-director of the Centre on Armed Groups who has
researched Taliban policies on education, said while madrasas
couldn't take the place of formal schools, they were one of the
final avenues of learning left for girls and women.
"The options for female education are evaporating," said Jackson,
adding that formal schools were seen among some Taliban supporters
as a symbol of international occupation. "There's deep-seated
mistrust of the formal education sector, despite the fact that it
too incorporates Islamic education."
Not everyone within the administration agrees with the education
restrictions. Four officials, who declined to be identified due to
the sensitivity of the matter, told Reuters they privately backed
secondary education for girls and that supreme leader Haibatullah
Akhundzada and his close advisers had driven the school ban.
Akhundzada, who is based in Kandahar and rarely appears in public,
could not be reached for comment on any tensions within the
administration over female education. Requests for comment to
Akhundzada and other officials are handled by the Taliban
administration spokesman, who didn't comment on this matter.
(Additional reporting by Jibran Ahmad in Peshawar and Jonathan
Landay in Washington; Editing by Mike Collett-White and Pravin Char)
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