| Afghan Women Urged to Dress Traditional The Associated Press
05/02/2003
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KABUL - A council of Islamic scholars has urged Afghan women working outside of their homes to wear a traditional long dress and headscarf. "The proper dress for the woman is the hijab, and it shouldn't be too tight," deputy chief of the Supreme Court, Fazil Ahmed Manawi said. In a resolution read out late Thursday on television by Manawi, the clerics also urged the government to punish publications that violate Islamic values. He didn't define what the 350-strong council viewed as Islamic values, but said its decisions were "semiofficial." He also didn't elaborate on the kinds of punishments the religious clerics were seeking. Some Afghan women and girls have returned to work and education since the fall in late 2001 of the hardline Taliban government, which had imposed a version of Islamic law that confined many women to the home. President Hamid Karzai has spoken out for greater freedoms and equal rights, but he has avoided confrontation with religious conservatives, inside and outside his weak central government. They insist Islamic law remains in force in Muslim Afghanistan, where Taliban-era restrictions remain in some regions. Afghanistan is a deeply conservative society and many of the Taliban's hardline edicts, including those against women, reflected tribal customs rather than Islamic teachings. The scholars, who held a meeting in Kabul Thursday, did not speak out against women taking up work or education. Nor did they demand a return of the burqa, the head-to-toe veil mandatory under the Taliban. Instead, they urged working women to wear the Islamic hijab, a head scarf and long dress. The council, made up of clerics from Islam's main Sunni and Shiite sects and from Afghanistan's various ethnic groups, also demanded that the Afghan government promote madrassas or Islamic seminaries. They also called for Islamic scholars to be given a say in government in recognition of their role in the fight against the invading Soviet Union in the 1980s.
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