Taliban replace women's ministry with Ministry of Virtue and Vice

[left-of-center2012]

Workers in the Afghan capital Kabul replaced signs for the country's women's ministry with those for the Taliban's moral police on Friday, as female former employees of the department said they had been locked out of the building.

A sign for the building was covered by a replacement in a mixture of Dari and Arabic, reading
"Ministries of Prayer and Guidance and the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice" on Friday, according to photographs and Reuters witnesses.

When the Taliban were last in power from 1996-2001 girls were not allowed to attend school and women were banned from work and education. During that period its Ministry for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice became known as the group's moral police,
enforcing its interpretation of sharia that included a strict dress code
and public executions and floggings.

Under previous Taliban rule, the virtue and vice ministry had been known for its rigid Sharia law interpretations, with police being sent into areas to enforce their version of Islamic rules, according to the BBC.
If women left the house without a man by their side or were not wearing modest-enough attire,
they could be beaten by members.

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/taliban-replaces-womens-ministry-with-ministry-virtue-vice-2021-09-17/

https://thehill.com/policy/international/572809-womens-ministry-replaced-by-taliban

[msongs]

1. 300K afghan military melts away in support of taliban takeover nt

[PA_jen]

2. Here we go...

backwards

[keithbvadu2]

3. Headquarters in Dallas or Houston?

Headquarters in Dallas or Houston?

[lpbk2713]

4. Sign on door ...

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. Return to secondary school for boys announced, but not for girls

Girls were not mentioned in Friday’s announcement, which means boys will be back at their desks next week after a one-month hiatus, while their sisters will still be stuck at home.

The Taliban education ministry said secondary school classes for boys in grades seven to 12 would resume on Saturday, the start of the Afghan week. “All male teachers and students should attend their educational institutions,” the statement said. The future of girls and female teachers, stuck at home since the Taliban took control, was not addressed.
...
The decision on education has worrying echoes of the tactics the Taliban used in the 1990s, when they last ruled Afghanistan, to bar girls from school without issuing a formal prohibition.

“Education and literacy are so strongly valued in Islam that the Taliban could not ban girls schools on Islamic grounds, so they always said they would open them when security improved. It never did. They never opened the schools,” said Kate Clark, co-director of the Afghanistan Analysts Network, who worked in Afghanistan at the time.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/17/taliban-ban-girls-from-secondary-education-in-afghanistan