Yesterday (Saturday, July 2), the participating members of the huge gathering of religious scholars terminated this gathering by issuing an eleven-point resolution.
In the eleven articles of this resolution, there is no mention of the realization of women’s rights by the Taliban and the opening of girls’ schools, and it is limited only to supporting and calling the Taliban system legitimate. On the second day of the meeting, National Radio and Television, which broadcasts under the control of the Taliban, announced the participation of Mullah Hebatullah Akhundzada, the leader of this group, with the audio coverage of the meeting.
In the voice attributed to Mullah Hebatullah Akhundzada, he emphasizes that the current Taliban system implements Sharia law and does not accept the demands of foreigners (women and girls’ rights).
Akhundzada does not mention the important concerns of Afghan citizens such as women’s rights, official languages, religious freedom of minorities. In only one part of his speech, he talks about the adaptation of Sharia with the Hanafi religious sect. The participants of the meeting say that they did not see the face of Mulla hebatullah, he spoke invisibly in the meeting. One of these participants, on the condition of not revealing his identity, told the Afghan Women News Agency that Mullah Akhundzada appeared in a corner of the hall and did not come on stage during the speech. By publishing a picture of a man standing with his back to the people, the users of cyberspace said that he was the leader of the Taliban. But the participants of the meeting say that this picture is related to a muazzin who was standing facing the Qibla while saying the call to prayer.
So far, it is not clear who met Mullah Akhundzada, the leader of the Taliban, the participants of the meeting also have different stories about his presence in the meeting.
During these three days of gathering, no media was able to share and cover the gathering. After the end of the meeting and during the reading of the resolution, a number of local media participated in the meeting and covered the eleven-point resolution of religious scholars. In the first article of this resolution, religious scholars and elders have considered the support and defense of the current system as their religious and national duty and the people’s.
And in the second article, they declared their allegiance to Mullah Hebatullah Akhundzada and accepted him as the Shariah ruler and leader of the emirate. In the third article of this resolution, the world is asked to remove the sanctions against the Islamic Emirate and to release the assets of Afghanistan because according to the scholars of Afghanistan, the current system has internal legitimacy.
In the sixth article of this resolution, it is claimed that security and justice are ensured throughout the country and any kind of armed opposition against the system is considered as rebellion and corruption in the land, and it is obligatory for the emirate and the nation to eliminate it. Any kind of opposition to this system is in conflict with Sharia and is corruption and illegal action. Only in the ninth article of this resolution is mentioned the provision of rights of women and ethnic minorities in the light of Sharia law. “We call on the Islamic Emirate to pay attention to justice, religious and modern education, health, agriculture, industry, rights of minorities, children, women and the whole nation in general, all-round progress, economic growth and balanced development in the light of Islamic holy law.”
During his speech, Mullah Hebatullah called the opponents of the Taliban system crazy, and referring to the civil protests of women, he said that they were provoked by the Westerners to oppose the Taliban. In response to the absence of women in this meeting, national and international human rights institutions called it as lacking in legal legitimacy and any kind of decision was unacceptable for the people and women of Afghanistan. The political party of the wave of change under the leadership of Fawzia Kofi, the human rights commission and the United Nations are the institutions that called the gathering of religious scholars in support of the Taliban system illegitimate and called it a pre-designed program to legitimize the Taliban internally.
Reporter: Latifa Sadat Mosavi
Translated by: Hussaini
