Kabul [Afghanistan], November 1 (HBTV): The Taliban have imposed a new rule that further silences Afghan women's voices, banning them from hearing each other's voices in an effort to erase "women entirely from public life and society," reported the New York Post.

The Talibani Minister for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, Khalid Hanafi, announced the ban, stating that "even when an adult female prays and another female passes by, she must not pray loudly enough for them to hear." He emphasized that a woman's voice is considered "awrah"—meaning that which must be covered and shouldn't be heard in public.

"When women are not permitted to call takbir or athan [Islamic call to prayer], they certainly cannot sing songs or [make] music," Hanafi said, according to the New York Post. "How could they be allowed to sing if they aren't even permitted to hear each other's voices while praying, let alone for anything else?"

Further details of the Taliban's ruling remain unclear, but Hanafi indicated that it "will be gradually implemented, and God will be helping us in each step we take."

Human rights activists both within Afghanistan and globally have condemned the move, asserting that it effectively bans Afghan women from holding conversations with one another. "It is hard to imagine the situation getting worse after the Taliban banned women's voices and faces in public last month, but with this latest decree, we have seen that the Taliban's capacity to inflict harm on women has no limits," said Zohal Azra from the Australian Hazara Advocacy Network. She noted that since the Taliban's return to power, they have systematically erased women and girls from public life through over 105 decrees, enforced violently and arbitrarily.

"The situation is so dire that it requires urgent global intervention to support women in Afghanistan. Through these decrees, the Taliban has established a system of gender apartheid," Zaki Haidari, Amnesty International Australia's Strategic Refugee Rights Campaigner, stated. She added that the situation for women and girls in Afghanistan is "growing darker by the day." Haidari, who is of Hazara background, remarked, "The Taliban is methodically punishing women, seemingly testing how far they can push before the world responds."

Earlier, on September 29, United Nations Chief Antonio Guterres expressed deep concern over the situation in Afghanistan, likening it to some of the most egregious systems of oppression in recent history.

Notably, the Taliban have attempted to partially defend their new laws by claiming they are intended to safeguard women. Long before the Taliban's rise to power, Afghanistan granted women the right to vote in 1919, a year before the United States, and opened its first schools for girls in 1921, according to The Washington Post.   

(ANI)