Suhail Shaheen, the Taliban’s spokesman consequently warned the United States Friday not to try to change their hard-line beliefs, in response to concerns over the rights of women in the new Afghanistan
Suhail Shaheen said women are allowed to work and receive an education as long as they wear a hijab, the veil Muslim women wear in the presence of men.
“That is a change of culture,” Shaheen told Fox News. “Our culture … they can receive education with hijab. They can work with hijab.”
Shaheen later claimed there would be no issue with women’s right to work or right to an education.
“There will be no issue about the women’s rights. No problem about their education, their work,” he said. “But we should not be after changing each other’s culture, as we are not intending to change your culture, you should not be changing our culture.”
Women who have survived Taliban leadership in the past have come forward with concerns now that the militant group is back in power. Under the previous regime, women were not allowed to go anywhere in public without a male relative escorting them. Women in Afghanistan recently were instructed to go home during their work hours because they were told it was not safe.
Shortly after the fall of Kabul, Taliban fighters were seen defacing the photographs of Afghan women, another sign that the culture within the Taliban has not changed, despite their claims to the contrary.
The Taliban said they are focused on looking to the future. Shaheen said the end of the U.S. occupation signalled a new start for Afghanistan.
“We have closed one chapter. For us, it was occupation. We ended that, we were staging resistance,” he told Fox News. “But now, it is closed. It is the past. We have to focus on the future that is better for them and for us.”