AhlulBayt News Agency (ABNA): As the Taliban continue to bar women and girls in Afghanistan from education, employment, and social participation, a Sunni Islamic scholar, Abu Omar Ahmad Farooq Qasemi, openly challenged the group’s restrictive policies in a public speech.
In remarks shared widely on social media, Qasemi stressed, “A woman is neither weak nor powerless; a woman is a hero and the creator of heroes. She is the secret of life and existence, and the first teacher and nurturer of the Islamic Ummah.”
Qasemi, an ethnic Tajik teaching at the “Tebyan al-Uloom” religious school in Mazar-e-Sharif, delivered the speech in Dari. While he did not directly name the Taliban, his words clearly questioned their gender-based restrictions.
Referring to women’s role in Islamic history, he said, “If today we have martyrs, mujahideen, or scholars, all of them were raised in the laps of mothers. Throughout the lives of the greatest scholarly and jihadi figures of the Islamic Ummah, heroic women have always been present.”
Qasemi also cited figures such as Asiya, Lady Maryam (p.b.u.h), Lady Khadija (s.a.), and Lady Fatimah Zahra (s.a.) as examples of faith, courage, and sacrifice, reminding that “Imam Hassan (a.s.) and Imam Hussain (a.s.), the martyr of Karbala, were raised in the household of Lady Fatimah (s.a.).”
He concluded by emphasizing that women are sources of knowledge, dignity, and resilience, and that the Islamic Ummah flourishes through the presence of conscious and enlightened mothers.
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