How can a thinking person thrive in Taliban-terrorized Afghanistan? The short answer is he – or she – can’t. The country is now run by simple-minded Muslim fanatics, and they are determined to transform the country’s universities into academies of ignorance, appointing those just as troglodytic as themselves, the graduates of madrasas, to head the country’s remaining institutions of higher education. More on this latest demonstration of the terror group’s determination to destroy what life of the mind still exists in Afghanistan can be found here: “Afghan Professors Say Taliban-Appointed Clerics Taking University Jobs,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, July 19, 2023:
The Taliban’s efforts to eradicate secular education has raised fears that the moves are likely to contribute to the spread of extremist ideologies in Afghanistan.
Several public university professors have complained that Taliban members and those around them have started taking some of the top positions at universities and other educational institutions in Afghanistan as the Taliban-led government’s Higher Education Ministry increases its control of the school system.
The Taliban is determined to suppress all advanced and secular education, by appointing its own members, who have no professional qualifications whatsoever, and whose sole education consists of what they learned in madrasahs, to head universities. It is enough that they are True Believers in Islam, the only qualification anyone needs in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan to work in, or even direct, educational institutions.
According to the professors, some of whom spoke to RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi, Akram Shah Asim has been appointed president at Kandahar University, while Mohammad Yaqub Haqqani has been installed in the same post at Khost University. The social media pages of the state universities now show the two — both of whom come from the madrasah religious school system — as presidents of the universities.
Neither Akram Shah Asim nor Mohammad Yaqub Haqqani has studied secular subjects; they are solely products of madrasahs of an unusually primitive kind. One can imagine their resentment of the faculty now under their rule, who teach secular subjects and whose superior education is apparent in their every word. And imagine how the faculty, in turn, resent being ruled over by those they rightly consider to be intellectual nonentities….
The professors said that most of the vice chancellors of the financial and administrative departments at universities have also been filled with people linked to the Taliban, and that people close to the Taliban have taken the lead in other scientific departments….
So it is not just the university presidents who are appointed by the Taliban, but those who control the day-to-day operations as vice-chancellors of financial and administrative departments.
The Taliban has taken over all of the Afghan educational establishment, and turned all parts of it – secular schools, public universities, and vocational training centers – into schools of Islamic education, that is, into glorified madrasahs. There is no place left for a purely secular education.
The group also has banned women from attending university and girls above the sixth grade from going to school.
The girls who have already been educated, up to the high school level, will now be prevented from entering universities. And young girls, now in elementary school, will endure an even more severe deprivation – they are forbidden to go to school after the sixth grade. They will have, after all, attained an Islamically marriageable age by the sixth grade- – and marriage and motherhood are to be their entire Taliban-molded future. There’s no need to waste resources on educating them.
The Taliban’s efforts to eradicate secular education and replace it with radical religious instruction has raised fears among observers that the moves are likely to contribute to the spread of extremist ideologies in Afghanistan.
With every step the Taliban makes to eradicate secular education and to everywhere replace it with an “Islamic” one, this not only makes “likely,” it makes certain that the whole nation will turn into one vast swamp of Taliban ideology.
“When I was in the university, they brought many changes. In the university, they identified those who were like-minded [and] brought them to professorships, heads of departments, vice presidents, and presidents of universities,” Mohammad Qayyum Sial, a former professor at Paktia University who went to France a year ago to continue his studies, told Radio Azadi from France….
It’s not only the presidents and vice-chancellors of universities whom the Taliban has been appointing; it has turned its attention to the teaching staff, and replaced with Taliban true believers many of the professors who were properly trained in secular institutions. Some of these professors have been fired. Others, appalled at this turn of events in their universities, now seek employment abroad, or choose to resign to take up entirely new careers in Afghanistan, outside of education, with both their status and finances suffering. Such a loss constitutes a kind of internal brain drain that will have ruinous effects on the future of Afghanistan, its economy, and its culture.
In this topsy-turvical hell that the Taliban has created, the uneducated and ignorant are assigned to important academic positions, where they are allowed to lord it over the educated professors, who have arrived at their positions only after decades of study. As a consequence, these professors naturally bristle at their treatment, and make haste, if they can, to find positions outside Afghanistan. That is not easy. The students, too, become confused: they see that hyper-religious louts are running things in universities, and are naturally fearful of what Afghan academic life is turning into under Taliban rule, with those universities becoming glorified madrasahs. Quite justifiably, they are discouraged from following an academic career that inexorably will end, if they remain in Afghanistan, in their being subservient to fanatical ignoramuses.
Hamed Obaidi, a spokesman for the Higher Education Ministry in the former government, also noted that the Taliban has made many changes in the leadership of public universities and appointed its own people. In his opinion, these appointments will have a negative impact on the educational process and on academic institutions.
According to Article 23 of the Law for Civilian Higher Education in Afghanistan, a university president should be appointed from among a group of professors who have the proper academic qualifications, a guideline Obaidi says needs to be followed to ensure quality education….
Clearly Article 23 is not being followed by the Taliban. No academic qualifications are necessary. Even someone who has not finished high school can be given a university position. The two things required of candidates to head or to teach at an Afghan university today are fanatical Islamic faith and loyalty to the Taliban. Professional achievements count for little; they may even be a hindrance. A professor of biology who teaches evolution rather than the Islamic version of creationism may be out of a job; a professor of physics who casts doubt on Muhammad’s journey on his winged steed Buraq up to heaven and back within 24 hours will definitely be fired; a professor of world history who treats with respect the history of Infidel peoples may be dismissed.
If the Taliban continues on this path, the Afghan universities will become, as I noted above, glorified madrasahs. Such primitive schooling will hasten a brain drain, with professors trying to find work abroad or giving up academic life entirely. University students serious about their studies will also choose to move abroad, to enroll in universities where the professors, and not Taliban stooges, are in charge. Thus does Afghanistan, in thrall to a fanatical brand of Islam, end up destroying, or expelling, or causing to flee, the country’s entire educated class. This will all end very badly.
Walter Sieruk says
In Afghanistan, the Taliban detests secular education. Therefore, No more John Locke or the teachings of any other intellectual philological scholars ideas will be allowed to be studied.
The Taliban want the people trapped in Afghanistan to under the darkness tyranny and oppression of Sharia. Therefore, they ban them from receiving an education.
As Thomas Jefferson had, so wisely, declared “Enlighten the people, generally, and tyranny and oppression of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.”
Walter Sieruk says
That horrendously brutal, cruel oppressive malicious and murderous Taliban regime of Afghanistan, denies the Iranian, people their basic natural human rights.
The people who trapped in and forced to exist in the Islamic dictatorship of the Taliban don’t know about the intellect philosopher John Locke and the Taliban strive to keep it that way.
For the ideas Mr. Locke do apply to the people trapped under the tyranny of the Taliban. For Mr. Locke taught that any good government has the duty to ensure the security and safety of its citizens. Yet when a tyranny is the people in the tyrannical government do have every natural and ethical right to overthrow that terrible and oppressive tyranny/ government.
PRCS says
“The Taliban’s efforts to eradicate secular education and replace it with radical religious instruction has raised fears among observers that the moves are likely to contribute to the spread of extremist ideologies in Afghanistan.”
Only a blind observer would conclude that.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
There goes my dreams of a PhD at Kabul University 😈
ME Infidel says
I taught technical English at the Faculty of Engineering at Kabul University in the mid 70s. There weren’t any engineering textbooks in Farsi so the “students” had to learn English (or Russian at the Polytechnic Institute) first and then use American engineering books to become “engineers”. At best, their math skills were at about our junior high school level.
However, the country was scratching its way into modernity even though it had no TV, no railroads and only two commercial passenger airlines at that time. I left after a year because I knew it was hopeless even THEN after a student blew up in class when I tried to explain the concept of the word “theory”. Now, forget about it. The Taliban will take advantage of the lithium deposits and become wealthy thanks to all the insane push toward EVs. What could possibly go wrong with “simple-minded Muslim” jihadists with unlimited resources?
James Lincoln says
ME Infidel,
Sounds like the lithium in Afghanistan is the new Middle Eastern “oil”.
Bazz says
This is all good news. Think how the whole country will become backward and useless even to themselves. Couldn’t happen to a more deserving organisation.
Jim Sidebottom says
Amazing. They are so stupid that they have driven the obviously smarter Russians and Americans out of their country. They may not be “educated”, but they clearly are not stupid. it will be interesting to see how they deal with the Chinese seeking to exploit their mineral wealth.
Clifford Fodor says
Secular education? That’s supposed to be superior to Islam? Is it also supposed to be superior to a Christian education? Here in America, it’s becoming wrong to love our own country. We are being told that God is just a superstition. Divorce and remarriage is normal. Homosexuality is suppose to be normal. Money is the most important thing in the world. And the suicide rate is climbing.
Troybeam says
No big surprise here, education is not an option especially for women. The only way for the people of Afghanistan to have any kind of educational system that works for the people is to make a stand against the Taliban and that is never going to happen because the sheep are too timid to fight the wolves.