Women Pose in Colourful Clothes to Protest Taliban’s Black Hijab Mandate

"This is Afghan culture," wrote one of the many women who participated in the campaign and put her picture online.

(From left) Peymana Assad, Sana Safi, and Waslat Hasrat Nazimi in  traditional Afghan clothing.

(Photo Courtesy: Twitter)

In the wake of the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan, some laws and customs have come into the picture that a lot of women in Afghanistan find backward and offensive.

One of them is the mandate for women to wear black hijabs when they are out in public. This is not the only rule that has been implemented; educational institutions have made it mandatory for men and women to sit separately, videos of which had previosuly gone viral online.

In a bid to protest these rules, a few Afghan women have posted pictures of themselves in vibrant, traditional Afghan dresses that negate the Taliban's rules. The campaign was apparently triggered by Bahar Jalali, a former faculty member of the American University of Afghanistan when she posted a picture of herself on LinkedIn.

As soon as the Taliban kicked in the law of wearing the hijab, she even took to her Twitter and wrote, "No woman has ever dressed like this in the history of Afghanistan. This is utterly foreign and alien to Afghan culture. I posted my pic in the traditional Afghan dress to inform, educate, and dispel the misinformation that is being propagated by Taliban."

A lot of women participated in support and posted pictures of themselves in traditional Afghan clothing, looking vibrant as ever. Waslat Hasrat-Nazimi, the head of Afghan service at DW News, posted a picture with the caption, "Me wearing traditional Afghan attire in Kabul. This is Afghan culture and this is how Afghan women dress."

Peymana Assad also wrote, "This is Afghan culture. My traditional dress #AfghanWomen Thank you to Dr @RoxanaBahar1 for the inspiration. Our cultural attire is not the dementor outfits the Taliban have women wearing."

BBC journalist Sana Safi was also one of the many women who joined in, and wrote, "So how do Afghan women dress then? They ask. This is how. If I was in Afghanistan then I would have the scarf on my head. This is as “conservative” and “traditional” as I/you can get."

It's amazing how these women have found such an incredible way of voicing their opinion against such a regressive law.