KABUL, Afghanistan — Girls lose worth if males can see their uncovered faces in public, a spokesman for a key ministry of Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities mentioned Thursday, including that non secular students within the nation agree {that a} girl should preserve her face coated when exterior the house.
The Taliban, who took over the nation in August of 2021, has cited the failure of ladies to look at the correct solution to put on the hijab, or Islamic headband, as a motive for barring them from most public areas, together with parks, jobs and college.
Molvi Mohammad Sadiq Akif, the spokesman for the Taliban’s Ministry of Vice and Advantage, mentioned in an interview Thursday with The Related Press that if girls’s faces are seen in public there’s a chance of fitna, or falling into sin.
“It is extremely dangerous to see girls (with out hijab) in some areas (large cities) and our students additionally agree that girls’s faces must be hidden,” Akif mentioned. “It’s not that her face might be harmed or broken. A girl has her personal worth and that worth decreases by males taking a look at her. Allah provides respect to females in hijab and there’s worth on this.”
The Taliban’s restrictions on women and girls have precipitated international outrage.
On Wednesday, U.N. particular envoy Gordon Brown mentioned the Worldwide Felony Courtroom ought to prosecute Taliban leaders for crimes towards humanity for denying schooling and employment to Afghan women and girls.
Akif, who’s the principle spokesman for the Vice and Advantage Ministry, didn’t reply questions in regards to the bans, together with whether or not any of them might be lifted if there have been to be common adherence to hijab guidelines. He mentioned there have been different departments to cope with these points.
Akif mentioned the ministry confronted no obstacles in its work and that folks supported its measures.
“Individuals wished to implement Sharia (Islamic legislation) right here. Now we’re finishing up the implementation of Sharia.” All of the decrees are Islamic rulings and the Taliban have added nothing to them, he mentioned. “The orders of Sharia have been issued 1,400 years in the past and they’re nonetheless there.”
He mentioned that beneath the present administration males now not harass or stare at girls like they used to do within the time of the earlier authorities.
The Taliban authorities additionally says it has destroyed the “evils” of ingesting alcohol and bacha bazi, a apply by which rich or highly effective males exploit boys for leisure, particularly dancing and sexual actions.
The ministry is in a fortified compound close to Darul Aman Palace within the Afghan capital, Kabul. Girls are forbidden from getting into ministry premises, among the guards who have been on obligation Thursday instructed The AP, though there’s a female-only safety screening hut.
Slogans on concrete barricades reward the aim of the ministry.
One reads: “The promotion of virtues and the prohibition of vices are an efficient technique of social order.” One other says: “The promotion of virtues and the prohibition of vices save society from disaster.”
Akif mentioned the ministry depends on a community of officers and informants to verify if persons are following rules.
“Our ombudsmen stroll in markets, public locations, universities, colleges, madrasas and mosques,” he mentioned. “They go to all these locations and watch folks. Additionally they converse with them and educate them. We monitor them and folks additionally cooperate with and inform us.”
When requested if girls can go to parks, one of many areas they’re banned from, he mentioned they might have the ability to if sure situations might be met.
“You may go to the park, however provided that there are not any males there. If there are males, then Sharia doesn’t enable it. We don’t say {that a} girl can’t do sports activities, she will be able to’t go to the park or she will be able to’t run. She will be able to do all this stuff, however not in the identical approach as some girls need, to be semi-naked and amongst males.”