https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/05/05/ [login to see] /afghans-who-want-teen-girls-back-in-school-have-new-allies-taliban-affiliated-cl
Girls have pretty much been unable to attend secondary school in Afghanistan since the Taliban took power nine months ago. Public protests – with demonstrators shouting "We are sick of captivity!" – have been shut down by the Taliban.
But now the supporters of secondary education for girls have unexpected new allies: Muslim clerics, including those sympathetic to the Taliban.
"Clerics are coming out and issuing statements and saying girls' education is a right," says Ibraheem Bahiss, an analyst for the International Crisis Group. "They're trying to convince the hardliners that this decision is detrimental."
Those supporting girls education appear to include the powerful interior minister and Taliban deputy leader Sirajuddin Haqqani, the head of the Ministry of Higher Education, Abdul Baqi Haqqani, and Abdul Ghani Baradar, co-founder of the Taliban, says Bahiss. They also include cleric Jalilullah Akhundzada, head of the Dar al-Uloom seminary in the western Afghan city of Herat, who issued a fatwa, or religious ruling, in support of girls' education in March.
Akhunzada was not available to speak to NPR, but his son, known as Mualana Muhibullah, said his father's fatwa was an "expression of truth and reality which needed to be told," he said.