The Taliban has banned women from hearing other women’s voices, in its latest bid to control and subjugate an entire gender in Afghanistan.
Announced on Monday, the new rule is feared to mean that women will now no longer be able to talk to each other.
Afghanistan’s minister for the promotion of virtue and prevention of vice, Khalid Hanafi said: ‘Even when an adult female prays and another female passes by, she must not pray loudly enough for them to hear.’
‘How could they be allowed to sing if they aren’t even permitted to hear [each other’s] voices while praying, let alone for anything else.’
He said these are ‘new rules and will be gradually implemented, and God will be helping us in each step we take.’
Any woman who dares to break the new rules will be arrested and sent to prison, the terror group said.
Since the terror group took control of the nation in August 2021, after the US’ heavily criticised exit, the Taliban has worked to strip away women’s rights.
According to the UN, more than 70 decrees, directives, statements, and systemised practices have targeted what women can and can’t do.
Women have already been banned from speaking loudly in their own homes, and are not allowed to be heard outside.
Women are also ordered to cover their faces ‘to avoid temptation and tempting others’, and are banned from speaking if unfamiliar men who aren’t husbands or close relatives, are present.
‘If it is necessary for women to leave their homes, they must cover their faces and voices from men’ and be accompanied by a ‘male guardian’, according to the rules approved by the Taliban’s supreme leader.
