Taliban leaders in Afghanistan expressed outrage Monday at the U.N.-led objections to their new vice and virtue laws that silence women in public and require them to cover their faces.
“Non-Muslims expressing concerns over these laws or rejecting them should first educate themselves about Islamic laws and respect Islamic values,” said Zabihullah Mujahid, spokesperson for the Taliban government, which is not recognized by any country.
“We find it insulting to our Islamic Sharia [law] when they object due to a lack of knowledge and understanding,” Mujahid stated on social media platform X.
His response came a day after the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) decried the enactment of the morality law as a “distressing vision” for the impoverished country's future.
“It extends the already intolerable restrictions on the rights of Afghan women and girls, with even the sound of a female voice outside the home apparently deemed a moral violation,” UNAMA chief Roza Otunbayeva said Sunday.
The Taliban announced last Wednesday the ratification of their law on “the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice," forbidding women from singing, reciting poetry or speaking aloud in public, and requiring them to keep their faces and entire bodies always covered when outdoors.
The 35-article law imposes severe restrictions on the personal freedom of Afghan men and women and empowers the Taliban Ministry of Vice and Virtue to enforce it. The ministry’s controversial policing of public morality is already under criticism from the U.N. and global human rights groups.
The legal document prohibits the broadcasting and publication of images of living beings, as well as content believed to violate Sharia or insult Muslims in accordance with the Taliban’s interpretation of Islam.
“After decades of war and in the midst of a terrible humanitarian crisis, the Afghan people deserve much better than being threatened or jailed if they happen to be late for prayers, glance at a member of the opposite sex who is not a family member, or possess a photo of a loved one,” Otunbayeva stated.
Mujahid, while responding to the UNAMA chief’s statement and objections from other foreign critics, said Monday that “such uncalled-for concerns” would not deter them from “upholding and enforcing Islamic Sharia law” in Afghanistan.
The Taliban introduced the morality law against the backdrop of their wide-ranging restrictions on female members of Afghan society. Since returning to power three years ago, the de facto rulers have banned Afghan girls from attending school beyond the sixth grade and women from working in most fields, as well as taking part in public activities at large.
