Taliban bans women ‘hearing other women’s voices’ in latest decree

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The Taliban has once again taken steps to further impose extreme restrictions on women under its interpretation of sharia law in Afghanistan, this time banning women from “hearing other women’s voices” while they pray, reports said this week.

Khalid Hanafi, acting minister of the Vice and Virtue Ministry, made the announcement over a voice message posted to the ministry’s social media pages, though it has since been taken down, confirmed The Associated Press.

“Even when an adult female prays and another female passes by, she must not pray loudly enough for them to hear,” he said in a message reported to have been “rambling” by The Telegraph.

A Taliban fighter stands guard as women wait to receive food rations distributed by a humanitarian aid group in Kabul, Afghanistan, May 23, 2023. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi, File)

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Specific details of the ban remain unclear, as women are already forbidden from engaging in call-to-prayer or from speaking in public. They must also be fully covered, including their faces, under a new law decreed by the ministry in August.

“It is prohibited for a grown woman to recite Quranic verses or perform recitations in front of another grown woman. Even chants of takbir (Allahu Akbar) are not permitted,” Hanafi said in the message reportedly posted on Monday. “So, there is certainly no permission for singing.”

The ban on public speaking enforced in August also means that women speaking inside their homes should not be able to be heard from outside.

A burqa-clad woman walks with children along a street in Argo district of Badakhshan Province in Afghanistan on Sept. 26, 2024. (Omer Abrar/AFP via Getty Images)

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This latest ban appears to be an attempt to bar women from praying or from using expressions like “subhanallah” – which is a common phrase essentially meaning “Glory be to Allah” – even while in their own homes if they are in front of other women.

The Taliban have claimed these extremely oppressive measures on women are a move to stop them from “temptation and tempting others,” and women in Afghanistan are required to have a male guardian whenever they leave their homes.

Women who are found to have defied the rules are arrested and imprisoned.

An Afghan woman searches for recyclable materials amid plastic waste at a garbage dump on the outskirts of Mazar-i-Sharif on Sept. 28, 2024. (Atif Aryan/AFP via Getty Images)

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A report by Richard Bennett, the special rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan, was released Monday to the U.N. He found instances of sexual violence, including rape, used against women arrested by the Taliban.

In his report, Bennett found the Taliban’s “system of gender oppression may amount to crimes against humanity, including gender persecution.”

Bennett is set to present the findings of his report to the United Nations General Assembly on Nov. 1.