Taliban religious-education priority reshapes what boys learn in school
The first changes after the Taliban’s August 2021 return to power were visible in classrooms: male teachers were ordered to grow longer beards and wear turbans and traditional clothing, and students were expected to follow new rules governing their appearance. The deeper changes, according to fifteen middle and high school students NPR interviewed, happened inside the classroom itself.
NPR spoke to students in Kabul, Herat, Helmand, Ghazni, Ghor, Mazar-e-Sharif and Bamiyan. They said English, science, biology and civic subjects had received less attention, while the Quran and other religious texts had become more prominent. Teachers of science, mathematics and English were expected to include Quranic verses, sayings and traditions attributed to the Prophet Muhammad in their lessons. The students and their families said the shift has been especially severe in parts of the south, including Helmand and Kandahar, where families already placed a stronger emphasis on religious studies and Taliban rule has deepened that pressure.
“Religion became part of almost every class,” said Hashmat Mubariz, 19, who taught himself English after stepping away from regular attendance, became an English instructor, hosts a podcast and helps run a nongovernmental organization. Before the Taliban returned, Mubariz said, his public school felt “friendly and relatively open”: students studied English, science, mathematics, biology and literature alongside religious subjects and could speak in class, share their opinions and ask questions. The school was not perfect, Mubariz said, but it felt safe and focused on learning. By Grade 11, he had stopped attending school regularly. “I felt I was wasting my time at school rather than learning,” Mubariz said. After the takeover, that atmosphere “slowly disappeared.”
The Taliban Ministry of Education did not respond to NPR’s request for comment. Ministry figures reported by NPR show it now oversees 22,972 religious education centers, compared to about 5,000 registered under the previous government. Only 316 of those centers are newly created, according to the Afghanistan Human Rights Center; most were existing centers that have since been folded into the Taliban’s education system. Over the same period, the ministry said, only 269 new modern schools were established.
Shabana Basij-Rasikh, co-founder of the School of Leadership Afghanistan (SOLA), said the restrictions on women are also pushing boys out of school. With women increasingly prevented from working, more of the responsibility for supporting families falls on men and boys, she said.
“Today we have an authority in Afghanistan that has made it a matter of national policy to restrict space for women and then place a lot of that burden on men and boys,” Basij-Rasikh said. “Naturally you see boys dropping out of school to shoulder that responsibility of providing for their families.”
The damage to boys’ education cannot be measured only by what has disappeared from the curriculum, Basij-Rasikh added. Boys are also learning from a society in which girls vanish from classrooms after sixth grade and women are increasingly pushed out of public life. Her greatest concern is for younger boys who have no memory of Afghanistan before the Taliban returned. “Their only normal is not seeing girls in school,” Basij-Rasikh said. “Their only normal is not seeing women in the public sphere. It’s a matter of time before those young boys are going to become young men who will be making decisions in our society.”
Mubariz and other students described losing interest in learning while some teachers were discouraged, absent or unable to teach their subjects as they had before. During the first months after the takeover, many teachers were not paid, Mubariz said, and some stopped coming to school regularly. Experienced teachers left and were replaced, in some cases, by people who lacked the training to teach their subjects properly.
Even before 2021, Mubariz said, students hesitated to raise sensitive questions about politics, war, religion or powerful figures. After the Taliban returned, that caution became fear, he said: students avoided questions that could be considered controversial, and teachers no longer encouraged open discussion. “I could not express even one percent of my real opinions or ideas,” Mubariz said. “I always felt that I had to stay silent because speaking openly could have serious consequences.”
An 18-year-old Grade 12 student from Ghazni Province described the Taliban takeover as the moment when everything changed “overnight.” He asked not to be identified because he feared that speaking openly could endanger him and his family. His school remained closed for several months after the takeover. When boys were eventually allowed to return, his teachers were still there and classes resumed — but the girls did not. “Months and years passed,” he said. “Not even for one day were the girls’ secondary schools reopened.”
At the beginning of the current school year, the 18-year-old said, boys in grades 7 through 12 at government schools were told to wear white clothing and a turban. He did not object to the clothes themselves — traditional clothing is part of Afghan culture, he said — but he opposed being forced to wear them at school. He obtained his transfer papers and moved to one of the country’s 3,000-plus private schools to avoid the requirement. Even at the private school, the curriculum changed, he said: lessons related to Afghanistan’s civic and national life, including discussions of Parliament, the Loya Jirga and the previous government’s constitution, received less attention.
The 18-year-old said the most troubling change is not only what has disappeared from textbooks but the growing belief among young Afghans that education may no longer lead anywhere. He sees engineering graduates selling vegetables or working as day laborers. “I don’t understand what has happened to Afghanistan,” he said. “You see people sitting in important positions who cannot even write their own names.”
Mubariz said he has seen that loss of hope among his own classmates. Some dropped out of school. Some went to Iran, while others tried to reach Europe. One of his closest friends struggled to continue his education while trying to support his family after his father, who had worked for the former government, lost his livelihood. Mubariz said his friend eventually lost hope and died by suicide. “It was one of the most painful experiences I have ever witnessed,” Mubariz said.
Mubariz’s two sisters were students before the Taliban prohibited girls from continuing beyond primary school. Their family does not have access to high-quality online education, so Mubariz tries to teach them himself. They study languages, read books and use whatever materials they can find.
Zainab, a Grade 9 student who asked to be identified only by her first name, said she considers herself fortunate to attend online classes, since many girls her age have no access to secondary education at all. Her family can barely afford the internet she needs for school, and the connection is slow and unreliable. “Classes sometimes freeze or disconnect before the teacher has finished explaining the material,” Zainab said. “When the connection fails, I miss part of the lesson and must try to catch up on my own.” She knows she is among the relatively small number of Afghan girls who have found a way to keep studying. “I am lucky to have the opportunity to study,” she said, “but the lack of reliable internet service makes learning more stressful than it needs to be.”
Mubariz said he received admissions and scholarship opportunities in 2025 and 2026 from Cornell University, the University of Connecticut and the University of St Andrews, but he was unable to secure student visas and lost those opportunities. He continues searching for another way to leave Afghanistan and continue his education. What frightens him most, he said, is not what he and his sisters have lost but what the country will become after another generation grows up without qualified teachers, meaningful academic instruction or the freedom to question what it is being taught.