Hekmatyar’s Son: Taliban Uses Religion to Marginalize Women

DID Press: Habib-ur-Rahman Hekmatyar has accused the Taliban of using religious interpretations to justify the exclusion of women from public life, arguing that the group’s policies reflect an extremist reading of Islam rather than mainstream Islamic teachings.

In a post on the social media platform X, Hekmatyar criticized the Taliban’s position on women’s participation in society, saying the group considers itself the only true representative of Islam while portraying other Muslim countries as having deviated from the faith.

Referring to a conversation with a Taliban member about international football regulations, he said the official rejected global football rules because men and women attend matches together. Hekmatyar argued that, if such reasoning were applied consistently, Afghanistan would be unable to participate in most international sporting events.

He described the Taliban’s approach as a form of “extreme radicalism,” claiming it seeks to justify the group’s international isolation by rejecting globally accepted norms and implicitly accusing nearly two billion Muslims and around 50 Muslim-majority countries of departing from Islam.

Hekmatyar also said the Taliban links women’s public participation to concepts such as immorality and improper dress in order to gradually remove women from education, healthcare, public administration, universities, and other sectors of society.

Citing the life of the Prophet Muhammad, he argued that early Muslims maintained social and commercial relations with followers of other faiths and lived alongside Jewish communities under the Constitution of Medina, while accusing the Taliban of portraying shared international principles as incompatible with Islam.

He concluded by alleging that the Taliban’s restrictions on women’s education and employment are aimed at limiting public awareness and shaping future generations according to the group’s ideological worldview.