With the start of the 2026–27 academic year, the Taliban Ministry of Higher Education has once again compelled university students to sign a 14-point pledge. The contents of this pledge – had drawn some public attention in January 2024. Now, reports indicate the Taliban are enforcing compliance with the pledge by having the document distributed across universities and declaring it to be a mandatory requirement for students.
Following the Taliban’s exclusion of girls from education and changes to the academic curriculum, the regime’s insistence on enforcing this document constitutes another devastating step toward reshaping the very nature of universities. At the same time, a large number of male students are being forced to choose between losing their right to education or undergoing a publicly coerced change in their religious beliefs. As many male students will not accept the Taliban demands, this pledge will effectively deprive a significant portion of the male population of the right to education..
Deprivation of religious freedom
Article six of this document requires students to pledge that they are followers of Sunni Islam, specifically the Hanafi school. In justifying this clause, the Taliban argue that since the people of Afghanistan are adherents of Sunni Islam and the Hanafi jurisprudence of Imam Abu Hanifa, students must also declare their adherence to this school.
The Taliban’s belief that all in Afghanistan adhere to the Sunni Hanafi school openly disregards the existing reality in the country. They ignore the diversity of Islamic traditions in Afghanistan — including Sunni Hanafi, Shia Ja‘fari, Shia Ismaili — as well as religious minorities such as Hindus and Sikhs. Instead, they resort to fabricating a false social and religious homogeneity. This is despite the fact that religious diversity has always been a defining feature of Afghanistan, where a significant portion of the population follows Twelver Shia or Ismaili Islam, forming either a majority or substantial minority in several provinces.
Afghanistan has long been regarded as a model of peaceful coexistence among followers of different Islamic traditions. This action by the Taliban violates one of the most fundamental human rights: freedom of belief and thought. By stripping away religious freedom and intensifying restrictions on Shia communities, the Taliban not only deprives a large segment of the country’s youth of access to education, but also sows the seeds of sectarian resentment and division. Their actions undermine the continuation of a historically peaceful religious coexistence.
Transforming the nature of universities
Nearly a century has passed since the establishment of public universities in Afghanistan. Despite wars and instability, an academic culture and university environment had steadily expanded. A university is, by definition, a scholarly space where merit and academic standards take precedence over religious or political affiliations, and where each new generation is trained across disciplines to serve as the driving force of national development and progress.
However, the requirements outlined in Articles 1 to 7 of this pledge — including mandatory participation in congregational prayers five times a day, monitoring the length of students’ beards, enforcing specific haircuts, obliging students to wear caps, mandating traditional dress (perahan and tunban), and banning music — amount to a fundamental transformation of educational institutions. These measures effectively shift universities away from academic spaces into Deobandi-style religious seminaries.
The imposition of such restrictions has no parallel in universities anywhere in the world and is instead characteristic of strictly religious schools and institutions in a limited number of contexts.
Securitizing the university environment
Articles 10 through 14 of the Taliban’s pledge reflect the group’s political anxiety about universities. It is imposing a security-driven atmosphere on campuses as a way to manage these fears. Under Article 10, students are required to cooperate with the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. Article 11 compels students to accept the Taliban’s rules and decrees, while Article 14 obliges them to recognize the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate as a legitimate political system and to refrain from any association with other political groups.
The presence of Taliban morality enforcers on campuses — they arrived with whips and scissors to measure beard length, ensure the wearing of caps and traditional clothing, and enforce prescribed hairstyles — is absurd, almost satirical in the context of the country’s history. It also indicates the growing securitization of academic spaces. Yet, beyond these visible impositions of Taliban beliefs, the regulation of students’ political associations signals a far deeper and more troubling level of control now being introduced across the country’s universities.
Hostility Toward knowledge and development
As rulers of a country in urgent need of sustained effort toward growth and development, the Taliban have positioned themselves in direct opposition to knowledge, expertise, and progress. The exclusion of girls from schools, the banning of young women from universities, alterations to academic curricula, the widespread removal and prohibition of books and educational resources, and now the enforcement of this 14-point pledge all convey a clear message: The Taliban are fundamentally hostile to education, higher learning, and professional development and, by extension, to the country’s advancement.
At a time when the Taliban are grappling with crises of both domestic and international legitimacy, these actions further erode whatever acceptance they might seek to build. In effect, the Taliban are undermining their own credibility and standing, both within Afghanistan and beyond its borders. Yet again, the Taliban prove that they do not require external rivals or adversaries; their own policies serve as the most effective means of discrediting themselves.
Omid Sharafat is the pseudonym of a former university professor in Kabul and a researcher of international relations.
