While reviewing the list of 679 titles the Taliban have banned from Afghanistan’s university curricula, my eyes stopped at the name of Professor Laila Habib, whose book Linear Programming appears among the forbidden works. My first thought: How could Linear Programming — a specialized statistics book used in economics departments — possibly conflict with Taliban policy or their version of Sharia? Unless the author is a woman, of course.
I have known Professor Habib since 2009, when she used the book, Principles of General Statistical Theories, in our first year course at university. That dense textbook, written by Murad Ali Aseel, was taught to first year economics students by Professor Habib alongside another lecturer. At Kabul University, statistics and other demanding science courses were almost always taught by men. Watching a woman teach complex mathematics in the Statistics Department was both surprising and inspiring. For us young women, her presence was living proof that a woman could both master and teach challenging subjects.
On August 28, 2025, the Taliban released a lengthy list of university textbooks that they claim are “contrary to Sharia and in conflict with the policies of the regime.” The official letter, which was signed by Deputy Minister of Higher Education Sheikh al-Hadith Zia ur-Rahman Aryoubi, stated that a commission of religious scholars, Islamic culture experts, and professors of Sharia had reviewed the books for ideological, doctrinal, religious, policy, cultural, and academic content. The textbooks they examined were not only banned from classrooms but also prohibited as supplementary references.
This was not the first purge of academic materials. In May of this year, the same committee, which is reportedly made up of 55 members, banned 18 university textbooks, most in law, political science, social sciences, and women’s and gender studies. Among them were Gender and Development, Human Rights and Democracy, Women’s Political Sociology, Sexual Harassment, Diversity and Gender-Equal Employment, Gender Communication, and The Role of Women in Public Communication. Their titles alone made clear why the Taliban rejected them as the regime has consistently opposed gender equality, human rights, democracy, and the study of women’s lives.
The new list goes further. More than 140 books appear to have been removed solely because their authors are women. It is difficult to believe that textbooks on statistics, organizational communication, health communication, photography theory, or conflict resolution in business could possibly contradict Sharia.
Over the past four years, the Taliban have steadily erased women from Afghanistan’s educational and academic landscape. In December 2022, they barred women from universities. In May 2024, they cut the salaries of female professors confined to their homes to 5,000 afghani a month. This May, they eliminated the official posts of female professors from public university rosters, labelling them to be “extra positions.” Now they have banned textbooks authored or compiled by women. This deliberate pattern of erasure shows a clear intent to remove women and their names entirely from academia and ensure that no woman is even mentioned in a university setting.
Afghanistan’s first university, Kabul University, was established in 1946 during the reign of King Zahir Shah. Women first entered as students in 1950, and the first female professors began teaching there in the mid-1950s. Afghan women have thus enjoyed 75 years of higher education and have contributed to both textbooks and research during those decades, except during the Taliban’s first regime (1996–2001) and since the Taliban returned to power a few years ago. The new list of banned books reveal a relentless determination to erase women from public academic life and to deny them the right to have their work studied by the next generation.
The role of women in the growth of science and human progress is undeniable. Despite social barriers and limited access to education, women made foundational contributions to twentieth-century knowledge, including enriching science worldwide in fields ranging from physics and chemistry to engineering. Marie Curie, for example, became the first scientist to win two Nobel Prizes—in physics in 1903 and in chemistry in 1911. By 2010, more than 40 women had received Nobel Prizes in scientific fields. These achievements show that women’s presence in science is not only essential but an urgent necessity for sustainable global progress.
The Taliban’s anti-woman policies expose a deep insecurity about Afghan women. They cannot tolerate women’s presence — or even their names — in any professional or meaningful sphere. Their vision of women reduces them to servants in the kitchen or objects in the bedroom, valued chiefly for bearing the next generation of men. During the past four years, repeated marriages by Taliban members have shown that their practice of polygamy is less about religious duty and more about a display of power and a competition with their peers.
Barring women from medical institutes, forbidding them to study clinical medicine, nursing, and advanced midwifery, and excluding them from aid work and higher education will have catastrophic consequences for Afghanistan’s future, consequences which are already becoming far too tragically visible. Two weeks ago, an earthquake in Kunar province claimed a majority of female and child victims largely because there were no female doctors, health workers, or women aid responders to help them.
Photographs taken four or five days after the quake showing women doctors and aid workers tending to the wounded. During the first few days after the disaster, the Taliban refused to let male doctors treat injured women and girls. Many died, waiting for female medical staff unable to arrive in time to save them.
Khadija Haidary is a Zan Times journalist and editor who previously wrote under the pseudonym of Alma Begum.
