Asmongold TV - Afghanistan Bans Women From Speaking In Public | Asmongold

Episode Date: July 12, 2025

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Women banned from speaking in public? What? Three years after the Taliban's return to power, a new law has been passed saying that women must cover their face. Taliban's return to power. A new law has been passed saying that women must cover their face and body completely if they leave the house and their voices cannot be heard in public. Despite the risk to themselves, some women have spoken out and have been telling the BBC's Yogietal-in-Mai what life is like for them now. We have hidden their identities and used actors' voices to protect them. It's increasingly difficult for foreign journalists to report from Afghanistan.

Yeah, I bet. This is Yugita's report compiled along with camera journalist Sanjay Ganguly and producer Imgen Anderson. That sucks, yeah, it's nuts. Every moment you feel like you're in a prison, even breathing becomes difficult. Well, yeah, you've got the thing over your face. Dead. We can't talk. We can't do anything.

Jesus Christ. This is a country where women are increasingly being pushed out of Vime. Their freedoms crushed bit by bit by a relentless series of dictates. The latest, a published law. This section says that if a woman must leave her home out of necessity, she's obliged to cover her face and body, and her voice must not be heard. We've had to be very careful and discreet when talking to women here because they're already operating in an environment of brutal restrictions.

And now the Taliban's morality police have been given sweeping powers. It's only been a few weeks since the law was announced, so it's unclear how stringently it'll be implemented. But already there's a ripple effect of fear that you feel when speaking to people here. We meet teenage girls who've already lost three crucial years of education. Oh, right, because yeah, of course. But they want their words to be heard. If we go out, we're scared.

If we take a bus or remove our masks, we're scared. If we speak louder, we're scared. There's so much fear and stress. If we can't speak, then why go out at all? Why even live? Until last year, groups of women took to the streets demanding their rights, risking violence and detention. Well, that didn't work.

I wonder, like, what the male population there thinks of that. Because, like, I wonder how many of them, agree with it. Like, obviously, like, it's hard to get a straight answer because of, like, the oppression. But, like, yeah, they don't care. Yeah, it's nuts, man. This is what they want. I really wonder. The Taliban cracked down on the marches until they stopped altogether. This woman broke down, telling us how she was detained last year while participating in protests. 99% because religion? You think this wouldn't happen without religion? I think it would still happen without religion.

It would just be maybe like they wouldn't call it a burqa. They'd call it something else. But like, yeah, sure. I mean, like religion is like a good vehicle for doing this. But it's not the only vehicle on the market. The Taliban beat me and dragged me into a vehicle saying, why are you acting against us? This is an Islamic system.

They took me to a dark, frightening place and insulted me with terrible words. What the fuck? We were treated like animals. After being released from detention, we weren't the same people we were before. Jesus Christ. Now, this is how Afghan women are showing dissent. Oh. Posting videos of themselves online, singing songs, criticizing the Taliban's actions.

That's a mistake. We met Hamdullah Fitrat from the Taliban government. Aha, here we go. He didn't want to be seen with a woman or sit directly opposite me. But he answered my questions. We asked how he could justify the law. The laws that have been introduced have been approved by the supreme leader in accordance with Islamic... Oh my God!

...been introduced, have been approved by the supreme leader in accordance with Islamic Sharia. Sure. Any religious scholar can check their references. Most of the girls and women we've spoken to in your country say they are... prepared to wear whatever it is that your government prescribes as long as you allow them to study. And because they're not being allowed to do that, they're being driven to the point of depression, even suicidal thoughts. Isn't it your responsibility as a government to listen to those voices and act on it? Absolutely.

Our sister's education is an important issue. Then why can't they get it? We are trying to resolve this, which is the demand of a lot of our sisters. Okay. We have mentioned it several times in the past two. For sure. Our leadership is working on it. A solution will be found.

It's been three years now since girls were locked out of schools, but it hasn't happened on the ground. Do you really expect people to believe that you are committed to actually doing it? We are awaiting the decision of our leadership. The Supreme Leader will decide. That makes sense. In a province not far from Kabul, we found some evidence that at least a section of the Taliban differs with the supreme leader.

We were given rare access to a midwife training course run by the Taliban government. All the students are in their 20s. Here, they're being taught how to nurse a woman in labor. It's a rare exception. But behind closed doors, some Afghan women are taking matters into their own hands. We meet a teacher who runs a secret school for girls.

Oh, boy. When the new law came, I expect. explained its rules to my students and told them things would become even more difficult. Every day I wake up asking God to make the day pass safely. Several times I've had to change the location of the school. Yeah, I bet. It's a quiet act of defiance and hope. I'm now in Delhi after more than two weeks of being in Afghanistan,

and one of the other ramifications of the new law is on relations between the Taliban and the international community, which has become increasingly difficult and unpredictable. And it had seemed quite different just about two months ago at the end of June for the first time ever the Taliban went to attend UN. The fuck did they expect? It's the Taliban. Like, really? I mean, what is this? Duh.

In Doha, it was seen almost as a breakthrough at that time. It was a meeting that Afghan women rights activists and civil society activists had been kept out of. The UN had come under fire for that, but people within it obviously had thought, it was worth the risk. But now they're questioning whether there was any point in conceding to the Taliban's request for that meeting. No.

And whether there's any point in engaging with the Taliban in the future. Well, they're religious extremists, right? And so, like, whenever you're talking about religious extremists or religious zealots, there's never a point that you can reason with them or explain things to them, because they're not thinking in the terms of you thinking. Like, they don't think logically. they read a book and then they do what the book says. That's it. So if what you're saying contradicts the book, then you're wrong. It's that simple. So I don't know why people don't get this.

I think that there's a lot of people that don't really understand how strong some people's, you know, like what's the word for it? Like how strong their indoctrination is. Because it is really bad. God's wars versus yours? Yeah, exactly. Conviction. Yeah, this is just, I mean, it's literally the fucking Taliban. I mean, what the hell do you expect? Right? I mean, fuck. Like, this has always been how they've doing things. Yeah, their view on faith is compromised, like any highly religious group. I mean, Taliban is not Islam. I mean, I think they, well, that's not what they think. Hey, and here's the thing is that you're always going to see people saying like, yeah, well, that's not really the way. it's supposed to be. I'll link you guys the video, right? I don't want to have a debate on what your religion is or what it isn't or anything like that. I fully understand that, like, I mean, Christians have done things that are similar to this. Like, we don't really do that as much anymore now, or at least in a lot of Western countries, we don't. But, like, yes, obviously Islam is not the only...

Islam does not have a monopoly on the oppression of women. Everybody knows this. Every normal person knows this. However, this is bad. It's bad. It's not good. After watching this video, you'll still say that they would do this without with or without religion, because earlier you said that they would find another reason, or am I misunderstanding? I think that religion definitely serves as an aggregating force and like an agitating force of like making people feel like they're more justified to do bad behavior. But I don't think that you need religion to do bad behavior. And I think that bad behavior and the oppression of people is something that is a universal. thing. So like, yes, this oppression is an outcome of their religion, but the oppression is not, like, it's not like if you remove the religion, you're going to remove the oppression. You're still going to have the same people with the same general values. That's the point that I'm making, is that it might be more, it might feel better to kill people because of a religion or oppress people because of a religion, but people will find the way to do it no matter what.

You need fantastic belief? Well, it's not. a scapegoat. And I do think that there's a huge problem that people have where they view that you're not able to criticize religion because it's somehow beyond, you know, criticism or something like that. I find this to be a very problematic mindset. And I totally disagree with it. I think that every religion should be able to be criticized completely. And different, there are a lot of bad ideas in religion that should not be moved forward into culture, right? North Korea is religious. I don't even know. I have no idea. It's like criticizing God, which is a no-no to them. Yeah, exactly. Criticized, but don't misrepresent. What I've noticed a lot is that people say that you're misrepresenting whenever you're criticizing them. I think that it's easy to say that you're misrepresenting, but whenever you look at the outcomes of something like this, I think that matters a lot more than what anything else does. They misrepresent themselves. Yeah, I mean, like the representation, like, how are we the ones that are misrepresenting if this is clearly what's happening here?

Individual faith is fine, but religion's terrible. I think that, like, I mean, I'm very much, like, not a, like, I'm not really a religion hater. I'm not really a religion and joyer either. I think that religion is, is it a net positive or a net negative? It's probably a net negative, if I had to guess. but I do think that there are a lot of people that use religion to improve their lives as well yeah I think so

North Korea is atheist anything that cannot be criticized is bound to be exploited yeah I think you're right you don't need a set of laws to know something's evil the people that hide behind a book are evil and just are evil

it's just like a corrupt politician well not from their perspective right I mean like a corrupt politician usually knows that they're corrupt like a person who's following a religious doctrine and doing something like that doesn't think that they're corrupt. I think that it's very important to keep that distinction. People can be extremist without religion. Yeah. No, I think that you're right.

You can't have morals without religion. I think you can. Why do you need religion for morals? Yeah, that doesn't really make sense. Yeah, false. Yeah, I don't really see how that, yeah, why not you have a brain? Yeah, of course. Any form of extreme philosophy, doom because to become monstrous will bring fucked up results not only religious ones yeah i think you're right about that but yeah that's generally what i think