KABUL —
Afghan university students will have
to attend more compulsory Islamic studies classes, education officials said
Tuesday while giving little sign that secondary schools for girls would reopen.
اضافة اعلان
Many conservative
Afghan clerics in the hardline Islamist Taliban, which swept back into power a
year ago, are skeptical of modern education.
“We are adding five more religious subjects to the
existing eight,” said Abdul Baqi Haqqani, minister for higher education,
including Islamic history, politics, and governance.
The number of compulsory religious classes will
increase from one to three a week in government universities.
He told a news conference that the Taliban would not
order any subjects to be dropped from the current curriculum.
However, some universities have altered studies on
music and sculpture — highly sensitive issues under the Taliban’s harsh
interpretation of sharia (Islamic law) — while an exodus of Afghanistan’s
educated elite, including professors, has seen many subjects discontinued.
Officials have for months insisted that schools will
reopen for girls, swaying between technical and financial issues as reasons for
the continued closures.
Abdulkhaliq Sadiq, a senior official at the
education ministry, on Tuesday said families in rural areas were still not
convinced of the need to send girls to secondary school.
Under the Taliban’s last regime between 1996 and
2001, both primary and secondary schools for girls never reopened.
“We are trying to come up with a sound policy in
coordination with our leaders ... so that those in rural areas are also
convinced,” he said.
Since seizing power on August 15 last year the
Taliban have imposed harsh restrictions on girls and women to comply with their
austere vision of Islam — effectively squeezing them out of public life.
Although young women are still permitted to attend
university, many have dropped out because of the cost or because their families
are afraid for them to be out in public in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, without a secondary school certificate,
teenage girls will not be able to sit future university entrance exams.
The international community has made the right to
education a key condition for formally recognizing the Taliban government.
Despite being in power for a year, no country has so
far recognized the government.
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