India (MNN) — At least 30 women in western Afghanistan were arrested between June 6 and 7 for allegedly violating hijab dress code.
The arrests aren’t a surprise under Afghanistan’s de-facto authorities, the Taliban. Many women were subsequently released, the United Nations reports. But what happened after the arrests was unusual.
On June 9, dozens of people in the city of Herat protested on the streets on behalf of the detained women.
Local sources say the Taliban responded by shooting at demonstrators, killing at least two and wounding others.
“The Taliban has a pretty strict and severe hand in punishment,” Floyd Brobbel with Voice of the Martyrs Canada. “So [it] just tells you that if there’s such an unrest that people are willing to take the risk and rise up, there is certainly a deep resentment and unrest within the population.”
Since returning to power in 2021, the Taliban has severely restricted women’s access to education, jobs, and freedom in society.
Some women in Herat, Afghanistan have had to add surgical masks to conceal their faces, according to a report from Asia News. (Photo courtesy of Mustafa via Unsplash)
“They certainly can’t be wearing makeup and showing their faces in public, and of course, the strict dress code and limited education. These protests were against these laws and regulations that the Taliban have put in place.”
For followers of Christ as well, dangers abound.
“And yet many of them are finding ways to reach out to their neighbors, reach out to people that they feel that they can trust, people that they have relationships with. So the gospel really goes forward by relationship.”
Pray for continued resilience for Afghan believers. Those who have converted from Islam are labeled apostates and are liable to be killed if their faith is discovered.
“I always pray in their case, obscurity, that they would be hidden from the eyes of Taliban authorities and leaders. That they would be able to have influence within their spheres of influence — which may be small,” says Brobbel, “but if each Christian reaches their sphere of influence and disciples them to reach a new sphere, what you see is that the gospel continues to grow at the grassroots level. That’s something that’s very exciting and something that can spread pretty quickly.”
He adds, “Pray for leaders that would be able to disciple well a new generation of Christians that are coming up.”
Header photo of women and children in Afghanistan is a stock photo courtesy of Wanman Uthmaniyyah via Unsplash.
