Afghan women sing to protest a law that orders them to keep quiet

Across the internet, Afghan women are committing what would be a crime in their homeland, ruled by the Taliban: They’re singing, like Fatima Etimadi, 34, and her girlfriends, belting out this defiant tune, a little out of tune:

“The flower will unfurl, revealing a spring of freedom,” they chant. “I sing the anthem of freedom, again, again, freedom.” In the video posted online, Etimadi wears a headscarf. Her friends have unfussy short hair.

“Every day, the Taliban seeks new ways to restrict women,” Etimadi tells NPR in an interview. “They’re making women die while they’re alive.”

The protest began after the Taliban’s Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice issued a sweeping morality law running over 100 pages in late August. It seeks to govern how people should behave in public as policed by officials of the ministry.

The law has various targets. Music and specifically “cassette tapes” are banned (the Taliban’s knowledge of music platforms seems to date to earlier citations from the ‘90s). Boys — defined as males who have not grown beards — are barred from serving as soldiers. Men are told they cannot shave their beads or wear Western dress — the law mentions ties specifically. It bans any representation of people in published or broadcast material, leading to concerns about how, for instance, identity documents will be used.

A focus on women

But much of the law dictates restrictions on women. They may not leave their homes unless it’s urgent. There’s no clear definition of “urgent” and presumably, that is decided by patrolling officials from the Ministry for the Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue, whose job it is to enforce this sweeping law. When they do venture outside their homes, they must always have a male guardian. They cannot raise their voices in public. Even if they are speaking in their home, they must not do so in a way that could be overheard by strangers. Also: No laughing. No speaking loudly. No singing. Even in private gatherings.

This comes from the Taliban’s belief that a woman’s body, her face, her voice — are attractive and alluring and must be hidden.

The prohibition of hearing a woman’s voice, including singing is an extreme interpretation of a belief long held by Islamic jurists that a woman’s voice is bewitching. “There have always been different shades of opinion,” says John Butt, an Islamic scholar who lived in both Pakistan and Afghanistan for decades. He’s translating the morality laws for the thinktank the Afghanistan Analysts Network. Butt says scholars have debated whether a woman’s voice should “be hidden, should it be concealed? Should she not be able to speak in public?”

While Butt doesn’t agree with the Taliban’s interpretation — enough so that he helped write a radio drama for Afghans who were living under the Taliban in the ‘90s, which included actresses voicing some parts — he says: “one has to accept that there’s room for that opinion.”

This new law comes three years into the Taliban’s rule of Afghanistan, which began after their fighters defeated forces loyal to the Western-backed Afghan government as the U.S. and Western allies withdrew in 2021.

Within that time, the Taliban have incrementally applied dramatic restrictions on women. Most are not allowed to pursue education beyond grade six. They may not work in most professions. They may not travel without a male guardian. That rule has now expanded: according to this new law, women and girls who have passed puberty are not allowed to leave their homes without a male guardian.

‘My voice is not immodest’

So far, reporting in Kabul and the western city of Herat suggest the Taliban have only partially implemented their new law. But even the idea of it is repugnant to some Afghan women, like Sahar Fetrat, an Afghan feminist and researcher with Human Rights Watch.

“This campaign is a direct response to the horrifying objectification and sexualization of women by the Taliban, where they say women’s voices equal their private parts,” she tells NPR. “So they are saying you can’t objectify my voice like that. It’s not something, like a private part of your body, that you would cover. It’s my voice, and it’s important.”

Some of the protest songs being posted by Afghan women are mournful. In one video, a woman in a black face veil sings plaintively. “You sealed my lips with silence. You have imprisoned me for the crime of being a woman. Who will now provide for my children?”

There’s also cheeky defiance. One young woman slaps a tambourine and grins. “Oh Talib,” she sings, “you go to sleep reading your books, but your mind drifts to women’s faces.”

Many clips end the same way — with women repeating the same phrase: “My voice is not immodest.”

Nilofer Fahim, 29, fled to France after the Taliban seized power. She feared their rule — her father, an Afghan security official, was killed by fighters of the militant group in 2019. She shared a clip in which she sings a defiant nationalist song. It’s all she can do from exile to support women in Afghanistan, she says. “The Taliban are turning women into nameless, anonymous shadows,” says Fahim. “A tool, to be used and kept at home, a machine for making babies.”

Etimadi, who released the video clip in which she sings with her girlfriends, fled Afghanistan a year after the Taliban seized power, after the Taliban detained her father. It was to pressure her to stop protesting the Taliban’s treatment of women when they first seized power three years ago. She says the singing is cathartic. “We’re singing out the pain and suffering of decades,” she says.

Fetrat of Human Rights Watch says Afghan women have a long tradition of opposing the Taliban, but they feel alone — bereft of support from regional countries, Muslim-majority states and the international community. “Women are carrying much more on their shoulders than they should be. The world is just silently watching this, and nothing is happening.”

Fetrat accuses the international community of emboldening the Taliban by not sanctioning them enough for their increasingly harsh treatment of women in their three years of rule — the prevention of girls from studying after grade six, the ban from most professions. “There were absolutely no consequences,” she says.

Ravina Shamdasani, a spokeswoman for the U.N.’s human rights office, is one of the U.N. officials who say they’re pushing the Taliban behind the scenes. “We are doing what we can, to continue to engage with the Taliban,” Shamdasani tells NPR — from briefings to the Security Council and bilateral engagement with countries still involved in Afghanistan.

“Isolation is never the answer. But at the same time, we do need to advocate for the victims publicly,” she says, describing the new law this way: “it’s egregious. It’s intolerable. It’s a violation of international human rights law.”

The Taliban says they’re following Islamic law and have urged outsiders to stop imposing their foreign beliefs or even expressing their opposition to their policies.

“Foreign entities must … refrain from meddling in Afghanistan’s governance, society, and domestic matters — or even from imposing their opinions,” went a recent editorial in the state-run Bakhtar News.

“It is worth noting that the values of Muslims worldwide, particularly in Afghanistan, do not align with certain practices in other countries,” the editorial continued. “For instance, the idea of mixed-gender education in American universities, compelling women to work for their sustenance, or sending elderly parents to nursing homes is deeply opposed by many Muslims. Despite this, Muslims do not interfere in these practices abroad.”

(To be clear, women work across Muslim-majority countries and elderly people face challenges of abuse, poverty and abandonment, as they do around the world.)

What might change the Taliban’s rulings?

A longtime Afghanistan analyst says the international community is stuck. Andrew Watkins says violence — the stick — did not change the Taliban. “We saw over 20 years of war, killing huge numbers of their members, their leaders, even that did not deter them from pursuing their goal,” he says.

Since the Taliban seized power over Afghanistan again in 2021, the international community has offered carrots, like recognition and more aid. “The really bad news is that we’ve also been testing the carrot and that seems just as ineffective as the stick.”

So for now, it appears that Afghan women are stuck under a regime that sees them legally, as a temptation for men, as objects to be concealed.

And some Afghan women are raising their voices to anyone who’ll hear them. One widely-shared video is of two nameless women, concealed in blue burqas. They seem to sing along to this song played in the background: “The waves of girls’ voices will shatter this prison.”