In late 2025, a short video began circulating widely on Afghan social media. It showed a boy sitting between two men — one the host of a YouTube program, the other the child’s father. The child, who appeared to be around four or five years old, was repeatedly pressed to speak about his feelings toward his absent mother.
It’s difficult to grasp what’s happening during that short clip. To truly understand, one had to watch the full program, which was hosted by a former television presenter in Afghanistan named Farhad Ramaki.
The child’s name is Masih. He is the son of Zulala Hashemi, an Afghan woman singer. In the YouTube program, the child is asked a series of emotionally loaded questions, such as, whom do you love more, your father or your mother? The child answers: his mother. The questioning intensifies: Do you know where your mother is? Do you miss her? If she could see you now, what would you say to her?
Under visible pressure, the child falls silent. He manages only to say, “Come home.”
The dominant narrative advanced by the host and the father is that the boy’s mother is an “irresponsible” woman who abandoned her family after being influenced by feminists abroad. Produced in a deeply patriarchal society and monetized on social media, the video showcases a small child who is placed in front of cameras not to understand his pain, but to redirect that pain toward his absent mother.
The result is not journalism, but a familiar form of social punishment: the weaponization of maternal love.
This is not an isolated incident. In what can only be described as an online trial, the man who introduces himself as Mohsen Hashemi, the husband of Zulala, speaks for more than 40 minutes across various platforms. He places the full responsibility for the situation on her. The programs are built entirely for a one-sided verdict as the the language used by hosts and presenters is both pointed and accusatory.
Within four days, one of the videos was viewed more than 200,000 times and received around 1,600 comments. Some express support. Many more condemn Zulala, not because the facts are disputed, but because she is a mother who left.
What happened to Zulala Hashemi?
Zulala Hashemi rose to public attention after appearing on one of Afghanistan’s most popular music competition programmes on Tolo TV, where she placed second among 12contestants. After the show ended, she disappeared from public view, putting out no new music and making no more media appearances.
In June 2025, a man claiming to be her husband released a video in which he alleged that she had been kidnapped by unknown individuals. Conflicting rumours of abduction, death, and survival soon followed, though no verified information surfaced. For months, Zulala remained the invisible heart of this saga.
Finally, in December 2025, she released a video stating that she was alive and in a safe location. Shortly afterward, interviews with her husband appeared across several outlets. Eventually, Zulala herself spoke publicly in a televised interview with Amu TV.
In that interview, she explained that after her appearance on the music programme, she was unable to continue her artistic work for three years due to various pressures. She said she was forced into marriage. She described being cut off from her family and experiencing severe domestic violence from the first day she entered her husband’s home.
“I was beaten constantly,” she said. “So badly that my head would bleed, my hands would bleed, my eyes would be injured. They beat me very hard.”
She also stated clearly that she had divorced her husband three years earlier. Though she repeatedly emphasized that Mohsen Hashemi was no longer her husband, the interviewer ignored her statement, continuing to refer to him as “your husband” throughout the program.
Zulala said that after the divorce, she was forcibly kept in her former husband’s house for three years, and denied contact with her family and relatives. She was separated from her child, and not allowed to be with him.
Despite these explanations, the host asked her six times during the 25-minute interview why she had “abandoned” her child or why she had not tried to take him back. The aim of those attacks was unmistakable: to accuse her of lacking maternal love.
Judged for not breaking down
The public reaction to her interview was both swift and brutal. Viewers expressed anger not only at her decision to leave her husband, but also at her composure, believing she had not cried enough or showed sufficient weakness.
“What I understood is that I did not see any maternal emotion from her for being away from her dear child,” read one comment. Another stated, “Her problems aside, there is no motherly feeling in this woman. I cried for her child, but she showed no reaction.” A third asked, “What kind of mother doesn’t shed a single tear over being separated from her child?”
Many dismissed her testimony outright because she is a woman. Instead, they congratulated her former husband. “Your husband’s interview was sincere and honest,” one comment read. “But most of what you said is pure lies.”
A relative of Zulala Hashemi confirmed to Zan Times that her marriage was forced and that she endured domestic violence throughout these years with her husband. Yet these facts are largely ignored or brushed aside. Public attention is not focused on the violence itself, but on the moral failure of a mother who left without her child.
In a society that often does not recognise women as full human beings, assuming the role of judge comes easily. In Afghanistan, a mother who escapes violence is condemned.
Why leaving is unforgivable
In Afghanistan, motherhood is not understood as a free choice, but as a predetermined destiny. From childhood, women are taught that their value lies not in their individuality, but in their capacity for sacrifice. Maternal love is transformed from a human emotion into a compulsory moral duty.
A woman who escapes violence disrupts this order. A patriarchal society such as exists in Afghanistan depends on the belief that women’s suffering is natural and inevitable. A woman who refuses that suffering and survives to explain her actions invalidates the narrative. To preserve the system, she must be discredited.
Criminalizing the woman restores meaning to suffering. If she is framed as selfish, cold, or a “bad mother,” then the suffering of women who remain trapped in violence can still be justified, even sanctified.
A woman who leaves is a symbolic threat. She shows that exit is possible, and that obedience is not fate. In Afghanistan, that possibility must be neutralized. Labels become a preventive tool that warn other women not to follow down the same path.
Responsibility is placed squarely on the woman, away from families, society, and the law. By accusing the mother of irresponsibility, the system absolves itself. Violence remains invisible; the structure remains intact.
This case of Zulala Hashemi and her son Masih shows that the issue is not maternal love. It is a structure that seizes that love and turns it into a weapon. As long as women are defined as mothers before they are recognized as human beings, maternal love will continue to function as one of the most effective tools to silence and control mothers themselves.
Zulala Hashemi did not break. And for that, she was punished.
Freshta Ghani is Zan Times multimedia editor.
