Banning Women from Varsities to Closing Gyms, Parks & Public Baths: Activities Prohibited by Taliban

The Taliban government, which came into power in August last year in Afghanistan, promised a moderate rule respecting the rights of women and minorities. However, after coming into power the insurgent group has announced a series of prohibitions and restrictions on people, especially women, curtailing their rights and movements.

The insurgent group has announced a ban on women from going to universities, and girls from going to middle school and high school, restricting women from most employment and ordering them to wear head-to-toe clothing in public. Women are also banned from parks and gyms.

Here are some of the recent bans announced by the Taliban:

Ban on University Education for Women

The Taliban recently banned female students from attending universities effective immediately in the latest edict cracking down on women’s rights and freedoms. Despite initially promising a more moderate rule respecting rights for women’s and minorities, the Taliban have widely implemented their strict interpretation of Islamic law, or Sharia.

They have banned girls from middle school and high school, restricted women from most employment and ordered them to wear head-to-toe clothing in public.

Ban on women from gyms and public baths

Earlier in November, the Taliban ruled that gyms and public baths were now also off limits to Afghan women.

“Gyms are closed for women because their trainers were male and some of them were combined gyms,” Mohammad Akif Sadeq Mohajir, spokesman for the Ministry for the Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue, told AFP. He also said “hammams” — traditional public bathing houses that have always been segregated by sex — were now also off limits.

Ban on women from parks and funfairs

The Taliban have banned Afghan women from entering the capital’s public parks and funfairs, just months after ordering access to be segregated by gender.

The new rule, introduced this week, further squeezes women out of an ever-shrinking public space that already sees them banned from traveling without a male escort and forced to wear a hijab or burqa whenever out of the home.

Women are increasingly being squeezed out of public life since the Taliban’s return last year despite the hardline Islamists promising a softer version of the harsh rule that characterised their first stint in power that ended in 2001.

The new restrictions on women and their rights come after a series of diktats announced by the Taliban last year.

Here are some of the restrictions the Taliban announced last year.

FOREIGN CURRENCY

Afghanistan’s Taliban announced a ban on the use of foreign currencies in November 2021, threatening further disruption to an already ailing economy.

Since the terrorist group seized power in August, the national currency the Afghani has depreciated and the country’s reserves are frozen abroad.

Earlier in October this year, the Taliban also banned the use of Pakistani currency, the rupee, in the country. The Pakistani currency was under operation in areas bordering Pakistan.

MUSIC AND FEMALE VOICES

The Taliban have banned music and female voices on television and radio channels in Kandahar province. Reports also said that several women staff members were asked to return from their workplaces since the takeover.

MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS

A month after the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan, the music went quiet. Amid Taliban rule, shocking visuals was reported from Kabul’s National Music Institute last year as the Taliban reportedly destroyed musical instruments including piano and drum set.

KITE FLYING

The Taliban outlawed kite flying on the grounds it distracted young men from praying and other religious activities. The much-loved national pastime earned a reputation abroad after Afghan author Khaled Hosseini’s 2003 bestselling novel “The Kite Runner” was turned into a film. “People would suffer if it is banned. Thousands of families survive on this,” one Zelgai told AFP.

WOMEN FROM PLAYING SPORT

Afghan women, including the country’s women’s cricket team, will be banned from playing sport under the new Taliban government, according to an official in the hardline Islamist group. The Deputy head of the Taliban’s cultural commission, Ahmadullah Wasiq, in an interview said women’s sport was considered neither appropriate nor necessary.

BAN ON BARBERSHOPS

Taliban banned barbershops in a southern Afghanistan province from shaving or trimming beards, claiming their edict is in line with Shariah, or Islamic, law. The order in Helmand province was issued by the provincial Taliban government’s vice and virtue department to barbers in Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital. Anyone violating the rule will be punished, the Taliban’s religious police have said.

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