The Taliban’s Acting Minister of Higher Education, Nada Mohammad Nadeem, in a visit to Bamyan province on Sunday, urged professors to monitor what students think, unraveling the Taliban’s attempt to control minds.
During the visit, Nadim asked the professors of Bamyan University to “pay attention to the thoughts of students so that they are not influenced by colonialism, blasphemy, and foreign thoughts” in a bid to “serve” society after graduation.
The acting minister further emphasized the importance of teaching academic sciences within the framework of the Islamic system. He stated that the ministry is working to improve the quality of the education system and announced plans to offer Masters’s and Ph.D. programs.
Abdullah Sarhadi, the Taliban’s governor in Bamyan, assured Nadeem that Islam “does not prohibit learning modern sciences, but rather encourages it.”
Despite Taliban assurances that excluding girls from education is temporary, the crackdown on girls’ secondary education and women’s higher education continues amid a wave of new restrictions on women in recent months further barring them from parks, gyms, and public baths at least in Kabul.
