Inside the Islamic seminary, dozens of teenage girls sit on the floor, rocking back and forth, as they recite the Koran, Islam's holy book.
Among them is Zohra Jalali, who was in her final year of school when the Taliban
...Arabic for students...
seized power in 2021. The murderous Moslem group soon banned girls above the sixth grade from attending school, shattering her dream of becoming a doctor.
Jalili is now among the thousands of teenage girls who have enrolled in Taliban-run madrasahs as a last resort to continue their education. The bully boyz have allowed girls of all ages to study at seminaries in Afghanistan, a predominately Moslem country of around 40 million.
"We want our regular schools to be open," the 18-year-old told RFE/RL's Radio Azadi. "Besides religious education, we also want to study other subjects."
The Taliban has vowed to root out all forms of the modern secular education that thrived in Afghanistan after the U.S.-led invasion in 2001 toppled the Taliban's first regime.
Since regaining power, the militants have converted scores of secular schools, public universities, and vocational training centers into Islamic seminaries, leading to a surge in the number of madrasahs in the country.
The Islamist group has also vowed to overhaul the national curriculum and build a vast network of madrasahs across the country's 34 provinces.
Tamina Qudusi, a former university student, told Radio Azadi that the Taliban's attitude toward modern education is self-destructive.
"How can we [Afghans] stand on our own feet if we don't have [modern] education?" she asked. "Uneducated women won't be able to achieve anything."
Qudusi enrolled in a madrasah in the northern province of Parwan after the Taliban banned women from studying at universities in December. She said attending a seminary would allow her to at least receive some form of education.
At Taliban-run madrasahs, students learn to read and memorize the Koran, which is written in Arabic, a language that few Afghans understand. They also learn about the teachings and sayings of Prophet Muhammad.