Taliban ban women from hearing each other's voice while praying: Report

The Taliban have imposed yet another bizarre order against women that will curb their voices further. The strange edict tells women not to recite the Quran out loud, as per Amu TV, an Afghan news channel based in Virginia, United States.

The order comes from Mohammad Khalid Hanafi, the Taliban minister for the propagation of virtue and the prevention of vice, who declared that women must refrain from reciting the Quran aloud in the presence of other women.

“When women are not permitted to call Takbir or Azan (Islamic call to prayer), they certainly cannot sing songs or music,” he said as per the report on Saturday.

The Telegraph also reported Hanafi as saying that when women are not allowed to hear each other's voices, how can they be allowed to sing? “Even when an adult female prays and another female passes by, she must not pray loudly enough for them to hear ... How could they be allowed to sing if they aren’t even permitted to hear [each other’s] voices while praying, let alone for anything else,” Hanafi said.

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The minister added that a woman’s voice is considered awrah, meaning that it must be covered, and shouldn’t be heard in public, even by other women.

While the diktat currently applies to prayers, experts fear that it will curtail women's freedom to talk to each other in public, thus further pushing them out of society.

The latest order comes after women were ordered in August to cover their entire bodies, including faces when stepping out.

Women barred from speaking in public

As per local media reports, women are forbidden from speaking out in public.

A midwife in Herat told Amu TV that female healthcare workers have been ordered not to speak in public, especially with male relatives. Notably, these are the only Afghan women who are allowed to work outside their homes. 

"They don’t even allow us to speak at checkpoints when we go to work. And in the clinics, we are told not to discuss medical matters with male relatives,” the midwife told the channel.

Meanwhile, it is not confirmed whether the latest rule has been implemented yet or not, and if yes, then how wide the implication is, is not known.

Women face severe restrictions under the Taliban regime that returned to power in 2021.