Why the Taliban can’t ignore girls’ education in the Muslim world

With little fanfare, a Taliban delegation from Afghanistan quietly visited the world’s most populous Muslim nation, Indonesia, in July. The trip was yet another attempt by the rulers in Kabul to gain any sort of foreign recognition of their harsh regime nearly two years after taking power. One place the Afghan delegation certainly did not visit was the Cisarua Refugee Learning Centre outside the capital, Jakarta.

There they might have seen why the rest of the world has kept the Taliban at arm’s length. The center is educating Afghan girls who have fled their country. “Here, women can be a boss; they can be teachers, they can be students ... they are strong,” Khatera Amiri, manager of the center, told Al Jazeera.

In other words, the Afghan girls are treated as equal to the boys. Indonesia itself – unlike the Taliban – puts such an emphasis on educating girls that they outnumber boys at the secondary level. “Indonesia can serve as an important model for the Taliban of how Muslim nations and faith-based organizations can play an important role in expanding girls’ education,” M. Niaz Asadullah, a University of Malaya professor, wrote in The Conversation in 2021 after the Taliban takeover.

Most Muslim-majority nations view educating girls as crucial to their society. “Every time I went to one of these Muslim countries, they did reinforce the fact that Islam did not ban women from education or from the workplace,” says Amina Mohammed, the United Nations deputy secretary-general, who is herself a Muslim. Islam, she added, is “a living religion,” and that influences how the world can move “the Taliban from the 13th century to the 21st.”

Gaining official recognition from Indonesia is key to the Taliban’s hunt for friends in the Muslim world. Yet Indonesian leaders insist the Taliban end their ban on girls going past the sixth grade as well as the ban on women working in many government jobs or with humanitarian agencies. “Today, we are able to do more things [in Indonesia] because we have women who excel,” Yahya Cholil Staquf, chair of the large Muslim association Nahdlatul Ulamam, told BenarNews last year.

The U.N. regards Afghanistan under the Taliban as the most repressive country in the world regarding women’s rights. Yet the Taliban are desperate to boost their ruined economy and to maintain legitimacy, both inside and out the country.

The regime’s leaders pay “close attention to what the international community thinks,” writes Andrew Watkins, an expert on Afghanistan at the United States Institute of Peace. Their level of detail on policies toward women, he adds, suggests the regime feels compelled to explain and defend its actions to the Afghan people and the world.

The Taliban delegation’s visit to Indonesia was a chance to perhaps win over – but also perhaps listen to – another Muslim country.