For Afghan women, there is now no more solace to be found in prayer, or song.
Not outside of the home, or with others, anyway. The Taliban, the Islamic fundamentalist group that has controlled the central Asian nation with an increasingly clenched fist since reclaiming power in 2021, issued a new set of rules this month that further restricts the women under its rule. A woman’s voice has now been declared as something “intimate” by the government – and as such, women can no longer read aloud, pray or sing when they are in public or around people.
It doesn’t stop there, either. Women are also required to conceal themselves from head to toe whenever they leave their homes, and are no longer permitted to even look at men who aren’t their husbands or blood relation. And the girls and women who fail to comply with any of this face detention – or worse.
“Inshallah we assure you that this Islamic law will be of great help in the promotion of virtue and the elimination of vice,” spokesman Maulvi Abdul Ghafar Farooq, who represents the ministry responsible for the edict, said of its decree.
This all comes as part of a broader set of new “vice and virtue” laws, expressed to the public as a 114-page, 35-article document. And it’s the latest in a years-long string of outright attacks on women’s autonomy and rights in Afghanistan. These new requirements follow a ban on education for girls and women; restrictions on women’s participation in sports; and the forced closure of beauty salons throughout the nation – among other rights, shamelessly revoked.
Roza Otunbayeva, head of the United Nations’ efforts in Afghanistan, referred to these limitations collectively as “intolerable” in a press statement issued Sunday. “It is a distressing vision for Afghanistan’s future, where moral inspectors have discretionary powers to threaten and detain anyone based on broad and sometimes vague lists of infractions,” she added.
Taliban government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid had the audacity to fire back. “We urge a thorough understanding of these laws and a respectful acknowledgment of Islamic values,” he said in his own statement. “To reject these laws without such understanding is, in our view, an expression of arrogance.”
The gall of these men, to speak of supposed arrogance in others, as they brandish ill-gotten power to forcefully mold the world to their regressive liking. A world where people suffer, and women disappear, as they sit comfortably and visibly in seats of control.
A Chorus of Dissent
As a professional singer, I often consider my own instrument’s capabilities and limitations – and the definitions of “power” and “strength” in a musical context.
The conclusion I’ve come to, after years of experience and contemplation and conversations with wise women in the industry, especially, is that true power and strength come not from the volume or size of one’s voice – though yes, there is joy and freedom to be found in taking up considerable space – but from simply utilizing and embracing our voices in general. In speaking and singing out at all, in whatever ways our cords and spirits allow.
It’s more incredible, still, when we bring voices together to make joyful noise – perhaps one of Earth’s best examples of strength in numbers. It needn’t even be “good,” so long as it comes from a place within, from a place that is true. That is strength and power, manifest.
Afghan women are now bravely showing that they agree. Using the hashtag #AWomansVoiceIsNotAwrat (“awrat” or “arwaa” refers to the private parts of a person, according to Islamic rules), Afghan women are now widely sharing videos of themselves, alone or together, indoors and outdoors alike, in which they sing, and read – in which they fight back.
“I will sing the song of freedom,” posted one Afghan woman, as she shared a 30-second clip of her proud voice in action. Others came together in their homes to do the same. In one especially moving video, a group of over two dozen women stood together in the open air – some faces covered, some not – to join together in song, as music blared and drums thumped and women raised their red-painted hands high, a symbolic protest of oppression and brutality.
And one Afghan poet, who posted anonymously to protect herself, expressed her anguish in writing – while refuting the new laws by then reading her work aloud. “I want to be in solitude, away from everyone. To free myself from all these troubles,” she said. “To breathe anew and become lost. To become calm, my soul full of light.”
Gender apartheid – of which the Taliban is undoubtedly guilty – means the collective loss of not just their gorgeous voices, but also women’s wisdom, their beauty, their talents. It means losing their very essences. Their souls. In 2022, when we spoke with former Afghan pop star Shakiba Teimori, she recalled the backlash after performing with her hair flowing free before the Taliban even returned to power, and her subsequent need to escape the country when they reclaimed Kabul, the capital city.
And, she plainly stated the most critical thing she’s lost in her flight from oppression: “Myself.”
The world simply cannot answer that with silence. They lose too much. We all lose too much. ◼️
