Date: 29/05/1404 Taliban leader Haibatullah Akhundzada has ordered a halt to religious education for women and girls in Afghanistan.
The decision was made at a recent meeting of the Taliban group in Kandahar, according to which the Taliban's ministries of education and higher education have been tasked to gradually stop enrolling girls in religious schools, Al-Arabiya reported Wednesday (August 20).According to the report, the reason for this decision was Akhundzadeh's concern about teaching new sciences, including mathematics, natural sciences, and languages, which he believes has caused religious schools to have only a "religious" name.
The report said that the atmosphere of the meeting was very controversial and a number of Taliban members expressed their direct criticism of the Taliban leader. Human rights organizations, the United Nations, and various countries have repeatedly condemned these policies and considered them a serious violation of women's rights in Afghanistan.

The reported order by Haibatullah Akhundzada to halt religious education for women and girls marks a further radicalization of the Taliban’s education policy, extending restrictions beyond secular schooling to religious instruction itself. This move signals an attempt to consolidate ideological control by eliminating women’s access to any form of structured learning, including spaces traditionally framed as religiously legitimate. The internal dissent reportedly expressed at the Kandahar meeting highlights fractures within the Taliban while underscoring that these policies are driven by centralized authority rather than social or religious consensus.