Female Madrasas and Islamic Agency of Afghan Girls and Women:

How Religious Education is Being Used by Afghan Women and Girls under the Taliban Regime

Haroun Rahimi

Faiza Muhammad Din

 

Abstract: This article examines the potential of female madrasas in Afghanistan for allowing Afghan women to assert their agency in the face of extreme restrictions imposed on them by the Taliban. The experience of female religious education and activism from South Asia and Middle East is very different from the systematic restrictions that Afghan women experience under the Taliban, but these comparative cases help the authors conceptualize of female madrasa going under the Taliban as a way for Afghan women to assert their agency. Whilst it is too early to reach a definite conclusion, the analysis presented in this article suggests that the Afghan girls and women chose to go to madrasa to resist their oppressive environment. Most female interviewees believed that women should be allowed to continue their general education and work—subject to hijab and gender segregation—offering religious reasons for this belief. This suggests an intriguing possibility for madrasa-educated Afghan women that their religious education could enable societal and familial respect and their opinions on matters of rights of women in Islam could increase in value. This could also enable them to increase pressure on the Taliban to respond to their demands—an outcome that has proven elusive so far. Being knowledgeable in the religious discourses, which the so-called Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) use to legitimise its rule, can enable Afghan women to navigate the IEA’s restrictive laws and access their Shari’ah rights, underlining the importance of being conversant in local legal systems and religious discourses. While this analysis does not suggest that female madrasas are an adequate substitute for general education for women, it does underscore the nuanced role of madrasa education in empowering women within highly restrictive sociopolitical contexts.