KABUL: Education officials announced on Tuesday that Afghan university students may have to take more Islamic studies lessons as a requirement, but they gave little indication that secondary schools for girls would soon reopen.
Many traditional Afghan clergy who are part of the radical Islamist Taliban swept to power a year earlier and are sceptical of modern education.
According to Abdul Baqi Haqqani, minister for higher education, “We are adding five new religious disciplines to the existing eight.” These subjects include Islamic history, politics, and government.From one to Government universities will offer three weekly required religion classes.
However, due to the migration of Afghanistan’s educated elite, including academics, some colleges have changed the study of music and sculpture, which are extremely delicate topics given the Taliban’s strict interpretation of sharia law. Many other fields have also been abandoned.
For months, officials have insisted the girls’ schools will reopen, blaming the continued closures on both technical and financial issues.
According to prominent ministry of education official Abdulkhaliq Sadiq, people in rural areas continue to question the benefits of sending girls to secondary school.
Under the Taliban’s final rule, girls’ elementary and high school schools were shut down between 1996 and 2001.
