Afghanistan Times
Related Articles
AT News
KABUL: Former President Hamid Karzai called on the Islamic Emirate to respect the request of the Afghan Ulema, who held a gathering in Kabul last week under the title of “National Dialogue of Afghan Scholars,” calling for the reopening of girls’ schools.
Karzai said on Twitter that the demand of the Afghan religious scholars is the demand of the Afghan nation.
“The call of Hamid Karzai is the call of the people of Afghanistan, particularly the education of girls is the human and Islamic right of women,” said Shahzada Masoud, a close aide to Karzai.
Karzai also welcomed the joint statement of the envoys of the EU, US and European countries for Afghanistan, which calls for the immediate reopening of girls’ schools in Afghanistan.
The religious scholars said that there was no legal justification for banning girls above sixth grade from going to school.
This comes as the European Union’s special envoy for Afghanistan, Tomas Niklasson, cited the Communiqué of the Special Representatives and Envoys for Afghanistan, and condemned the decision of the Islamic Emirate to ban girls from going to schools.
“We reaffirmed a strong commitment to the Afghan people and condemned the decision to continue denying Afghan girls the ability to attend education,” the EU special envoy for Afghanistan Tomas Niklasson said.
This comes as Afghan religious clerics released a resolution consisting of 15 principles in which they said that the education of girls does not go against Islamic values.
“There is no diversity of view on the education of girls,” said Mawlawi Waheed Ahmad, a religious cleric.
The Ministry of Education said earlier that the authority of reopening of schools for girls is in hands of the Islamic Emirate’s leadership.
