Never Trust the Taliban

The Taliban cannot be trusted, not today, not ever. Their words are deceit, their promises hollow, and their governance built on fear. Cloaked in the garb of Wahhabi piety, they claim to defend Islam while defiling its essence. Theirs is not faith, but fanaticism, a cult of control that thrives on suppressing women and silencing truth.

The Taliban’s version of Islam is not spiritual but political. It seeks not to uplift souls but to dominate bodies, especially women’s. Their draconian edicts banning education, employment, and basic freedoms for women have nothing to do with modesty or morality. They stem from deep insecurity and an uncontrollable need to dominate.

True Islam honours women. The first believer was a woman. Knowledge was made obligatory for every Muslim, man and woman alike. The Taliban’s distortion of these teachings reveals not devotion but fear, fear of educated women, fear of independent thought, fear of equality.

Since seizing power in 2021, the Taliban has reduced Afghanistan to a prison for half its population. Girls’ schools are shut, universities closed, and women-driven NGOs silenced. Women are forbidden to work, travel, or even appear in public without a male guardian. The “Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice” enforces their morality through violence, whipping women for wearing colourful clothes or speaking loudly in public.

And yet, the same self-proclaimed defenders of virtue are steeped in hypocrisy. Behind closed doors, they indulge in practices they publicly condemn, from the sexual exploitation of boys (bacha bazi) to the forced marriage of young girls. Their piety ends where their desires begin.

The Taliban’s obsession with policing women is not about religion; it is about power. They fear women not because of faith, but because of what women represent, intellect, confidence, and defiance. The mere sight of a woman speaking her mind is enough to shake the foundations of their fragile masculinity.

Every rule they enforce, every punishment they deliver, is an act of control. The absence of women journalists in their press conferences, the banning of women’s voices on radio, the erasure of female presence from public life, all of it stems from one primitive fear: that women, if heard, will expose the Taliban’s hollow faith.

The Taliban’s history is a litany of lies. Each time the world extends an olive branch, they respond with brutality. When they returned to power, they promised moderation and inclusivity, and within weeks, girls were expelled from schools, women anchors were forced off air, and the public space was wiped clean of female faces.

Their “reform” is a performance meant to placate global conscience while they rebuild their reign of terror. Trusting the Taliban is like trusting a viper not to strike. Their ideology is incompatible with human rights, equality, or even basic decency.

The Taliban’s greatest fear is not the West, not drones, not sanctions, it is women. It is the Afghan girl who hides her books beneath her shawl, the teacher who runs secret classrooms, the journalist who refuses to be silenced. Each one is a rebellion against the darkness they spread.

Even under the shadow of their brutality, Afghan women continue to resist, quietly, courageously. In their defiance lies the truest expression of faith and freedom. For every door the Taliban closes, a woman somewhere lights a lamp and begins to teach.

The Taliban is not a government. It is a cult of fear and control masquerading as faith. Its leaders invoke God’s name not out of reverence but to justify repression. They do not defend Islam; they desecrate it.

To believe their promises of reform is to betray the women of Afghanistan, the ones still fighting to learn, to work, to simply live with dignity. The Taliban’s rule is not about religion or morality. It is about masking perversion with piety, lust with law, and fear with faith.

~AZ