Taliban’s Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhunzada has allocated 100,000 teaching posts for private madrassa centers across the country amid a surge in the number of religious seminaries in recent years.
At least 2,000 teaching positions have been approved for 400 private religious seminaries in southern Kandahar province, where the group’s supreme leader is based, the Taliban-controlled Bakhtar News Agency said on Monday.
Fakhruddin Naqshbandi, Taliban’s head of the Education department in Kandahar, stated that this decision has attracted thousands of men to compete for securing the posts.
Last year, the Taliban’s Ministry of Education vowed to build large madrassas in the provincial centers which would accommodate 1,000 students in each religious seminary and establish three to ten madrassas in every district.
This recent announcement comes amid widespread concerns that the Taliban are closing down secular schools or turning them into religious seminaries that hinder students’ access to equal and quality education at a time when girls and barred from attending schools beyond the sixth grade and women from higher education.
The madrassas, which mainly teach Islamic subjects, have increased since the Taliban overtook power in August 2021, enabling them to grow in influence and resources countrywide.
The madrassa system has been kept alive largely through community and private funding and now administrative funds are also allocated by the Taliban authorities to bolster them.
Most of the Taliban leaders were educated in radical madrassas in neighboring Pakistan.
