From the day the Taliban marched into Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, the their supporters have sought to expunge women from public life. In a country where women previously had to work while the men fought, the regime has barred females from taking any job outside the home or even leaving their houses without a male relative acting as a chaperone. Education of women is forbidden. Foreign-aid agencies have been forbidden to offer any of their services or assistance directly to females. Violence against women occur frequently, including beatings, rapes, forced marriages, disappearances, kidnapings, and killings. Under Taliban rule, women were stripped of their basic human rights, such as, the right to their own bodies, the right to speak, to give and receive health care, education, the right to work and walk down the street. The enforcement of the gender-apartheid law of the Taliban has totally deprived women of their basic human's rights: to education, to work, to travel, to health, to legal recourse, to recreation, and the right to be a woman.
The Taliban are a group of soldiers trained in Pakistani Islamic Schools who believe that they are the soldiers of pure, fundamentalist Islam and the saviors of all Muslims. According to Islam, women are allowed to work, to earn and control their own money, and to participate in public life. In the Koran, the Islamic holy book, women are allowed contribute to the economy by owning and selling property 1400 years ago: Men shall have a benefit from what they earn, and women shall have a benefit from what they earn (4:32). The Taliban gender apartheid has no basis in Islam. In the Islamic world, at the beginning of Islam, there were no restrictions or prohibitions toward women to seek knowledge and education. There were many women scholars in the fields of religion, literature, music, education, and medicine. But in Afghanistan, women are denied of all rights.
