Three years after the Taliban
...Arabic for students...
banned secondary and higher education for girls in Afghanistan, many teenage girls are now turning to religious schools (madrasas) as their only available educational refuge. According to a report by the News Agency that Dare Not be Named, these institutions have opened their doors to girls left with no access to formal education.
One such girl is 13-year-old Nahida, who works in a cemetery in Kabul after finishing her primary school. Her dream of becoming a doctor now feels unreachable. "I would prefer to go to school, but I can’t—so I’ll go to a religious school," she told AP with deep frustration. She plans to enroll in a madrasa next school year.
Since returning to power in 2021, the Taliban have become the only government in the world to officially ban girls from attending secondary schools and universities. In the absence of formal education options, religious schools have become the only structured learning spaces for thousands of Afghan girls. Some girls, like 25-year-old Faiza, hope that demonstrating religious commitment might one day allow them to resume formal studies.
Zahedur Rahman Sahabi, director of the Tasneem Nusrat Islamic Sciences Center in Kabul, said his institution now educates around 400 students, 90% of whom are women and girls aged three to sixty. He notes a sharp increase in enrollment since schools closed, with students studying Koran, Islamic jurisprudence, Hadith, and Arabic. Though religious schools were popular before, he says, they’ve now become the primary educational lifeline.
While there is no exact data on the number of girls now studying in madrasas, Taliban education official Karamatullah Akhundzada announced last year that over one million new students had enrolled in religious schools in a single year, bringing the total number to more than three million.
Despite internal debates within the Taliban—like former deputy foreign minister Sher Abbas Stanekzai’s public claim that there is "no justification" for banning girls from school—the policy remains unchanged. UNICEF chief Catherine Russell warned that if the ban continues through 2030, over 4 million girls will be permanently denied education beyond the primary level.
While some religious scholars argue that religious and modern sciences must coexist, the overwhelming reliance on religious schools reflects the deep crisis facing Afghan girls’ education. For many, madrasas are a last hope—not a choice.