RASC News Agency: The Taliban’s Directorate of Education in Bamyan Province has instructed school administrators in the provincial capital where students from both Sunni and Shia sects study that starting next year, religious education must be taught exclusively in accordance with Hanafi jurisprudence. A reliable source disclosed that the Taliban’s Department for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice opposes the teaching of Jafari jurisprudence in schools attended by Sunni students. The source further revealed that the head of the Taliban’s Education Directorate in Bamyan recently convened a meeting with school principals, issuing a directive to implement Hanafi jurisprudence as the sole framework for religious education beginning in the next academic year.
The Taliban justified this policy by claiming that teaching both sects’ jurisprudence could incite discord among students. They also emphasized that the national university entrance exam (Kankor) is based exclusively on Hanafi principles, thereby necessitating uniformity in religious instruction. A few months ago, the Taliban’s Education Directorate in Bamyan had already ordered schools serving both sects to collect all religious textbooks used to teach either jurisprudence. At the time, they promised to distribute new textbooks that would incorporate teachings from both sects.
Historically, religious textbooks in schools within predominantly Shia provinces like Bamyan adhered to Jafari jurisprudence. However, the Taliban have now imposed a stringent focus on Hanafi teachings, further eroding the representation of Jafari traditions in educational curricula. In September, Habibullah Agha, the acting head of the Taliban’s Ministry of Education, directed provincial education departments to remove and report any books from school libraries deemed contradictory to Sunni beliefs and Hanafi jurisprudence.
Similarly, late last year, the Taliban’s Ministry of Higher Education instructed universities and private educational institutions to purge their libraries of materials that conflict with Hanafi jurisprudence. These measures signal the Taliban’s continuing efforts to centralize and homogenize educational frameworks in Afghanistan, disregarding the nation’s diverse religious and cultural heritage.
