Opinion: Afghan Women Deserve Better than Silence
The world is quietly watching as the Taliban brutally erases women, law by law.
A few days ago, I witnessed my mother, an Afghan woman, sing and clap along to her favorite Afghan music. She had the car windows rolled down, no fear in her eyes or shakiness in her voice — just pure, unadulterated joy. My mother was exercising her freedom, an act of protest against the Taliban’s treatment of women in Afghanistan. But she had one privilege others did not: she was in Canada, with me.
On August 21, the Taliban unveiled a 114-page decree, the “Law on the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice,” made up of 35 articles designed to suffocate women’s rights in Afghanistan. These measures go far beyond requiring women to cover their faces and bodies — they demand the erasure of their very presence in public, silencing their voices. Article 13 bars women from singing, reciting, or reading aloud since their voices are “intimate,” and forbids them from looking at men who aren’t their relatives. Article 19 bans women from traveling alone. “We assure you that this Islamic law will be of great help in the promotion of virtue and the elimination of vice,” Taliban spokesperson Maulvi Abdul Ghafar Farooq told press. It is one of the most shocking assaults on women’s freedoms in modern history.