Dress code for women Flogging, Stoning and Other Corporal Punishments Ban on criticizing Islam Ban on school education for women Prohibition of freedom of thought and expression Ban on Gender Mixing Extramarital sexual relations LGBTQ+ repression Sexual Submission of Women Violation of women's rights Domestic violence

Wanted in The Hague: Afghanistan’s Ministers of No Education

On October 5, the International Criminal Court unsealed arrest warrants against the Taliban’s supreme leader, his chief justice and his two education ministers, accused of persecuting women and girls. The same day, the UN Human Rights Council agreed that their treatment of women should shock humanity. The Taliban replied that only Sharia may judge them, as they interpret it.

By Delirium Islamicum Published October 14, 2026

Two ministers, one curriculum: subtraction

On October 5, the International Criminal Court unsealed four arrest warrants issued in 2025. Two targets were already known: supreme leader Haibatullah Akhundzada and chief justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani. Two are new: education minister Habibullah Agha and higher education minister Neda Mohammad Nadim. The judges see reasonable grounds to believe that all four are responsible for gender persecution, a crime against humanity, since the 2021 takeover, in connection with murder, imprisonment, torture, rape and enforced disappearances.

The two ministers earned their place. Agha, a cleric who led Kandahar's religious council, took over education in 2022. A senior Taliban official told Afghanistan International, anonymously, that he never received any formal education. Nadim, a former governor, police chief and military commander who had pledged to stamp out secular schooling, closed universities to women that December. Even Saudi Arabia and Turkey condemned the ban.

"Girls were studying agriculture and engineering, but this didn't match Afghan culture."— Neda Mohammad Nadim, Taliban minister of higher education, December 2022

Afghanistan is now the only country in the world where girls cannot attend school beyond the sixth grade. Elsewhere, an education minister is judged on how many pupils pass. In Kabul, on how many never get in.

Sympathy for women, a political crime

According to the judges, the Taliban stripped girls and women, by decree, of education, privacy, family life and the freedoms of movement, expression, thought, conscience and religion. Freedom of religion, confiscated in the name of God. Also targeted: people whose sexuality or gender identity clashed with Taliban policy, and the "allies of girls and women", treated as political opponents even when their opposition was merely passive. In the Islamic Emirate, failing to look down on half the population is a political opinion.

Humanity shocked, once a year

The same day in Geneva, the UN Human Rights Council adopted without a vote a resolution declaring that the Taliban's system of discrimination against women "should shock the conscience of humanity". It renewed the mandate of special rapporteur Richard Bennett, barred from Afghanistan since 2024. According to UN figures, half of Afghan women now leave home only once or twice a month. Humanity's conscience gets out once a year, in Geneva.

Sharia, the only competent court

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid replied that Afghanistan recognises no "International Court" and is "bound by the rulings of Islamic Sharia and its courts". The head of those courts is Abdul Hakim Haqqani, one of the four suspects. On October 7, the foreign ministry added that the court's ties with the former government, "established under foreign occupation", are void. Afghanistan joined the Rome Statute in 2003. In Kabul, treaties lapsed in August 2021, along with secondary school for girls.

"I represent Allah, and you represent Satan."— Haibatullah Akhundzada, Taliban supreme leader, audio message, March 2024

In that message, he promised to flog and stone women in public for adultery. In January 2026, he signed a criminal procedure code, leaked by the rights group Rawadari, that lets husbands "discipline" their wives: a beating only becomes a crime with serious injuries, and then costs at most 15 days in prison. Penalties also depend on social class: religious scholars get advice. Fellow Muslims are not spared. Washington keeps the Taliban on its list of "entities of particular concern" for religious freedom: according to a US commission, those who stray from their narrow reading of Sunni Islam, or criticise their policies, face detention, disappearance, public flogging, even execution.

In ICC member states, the four suspects now risk arrest. They may have to stay home, a lifestyle they have long recommended to women.

Verses and hadiths related to this article

Narrated Abu Sa`id Al-Khudri: Once Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) went out to the Musalla (to offer the prayer) of `Id-al-Adha or Al-Fitr prayer. Then he passed by the women and said, "O women! Give alms, as I have seen that the majority of the dwellers of Hell-fire were you (women)." They asked, "Why is it so, O Allah's Messenger (ﷺ)?" He replied, "You curse frequently and are ungrateful to your husbands. I have not seen anyone more deficient in intelligence and religion than you. A cautious sensible man could be led astray by some of you." The women asked, "O Allah's Messenger (ﷺ)! What is deficient in our intelligence and religion?" He said, "Is not the evidence of two women equal to the witness of one man?" They replied in the affirmative. He said, "This is the deficiency in her intelligence. Isn't it true that a woman can neither pray nor fast during her menses?" The women replied in the affirmative. He said, "This is the deficiency in her religion."

“O Prophet! Ask your wives, daughters, and believing women to draw their cloaks over their bodies. In this way it is more likely that they will be recognized as virtuous and not be harassed. And Allah is All-Forgiving, Most Merciful.”

“Narrated Ibn `Abbas: The Prophet (ﷺ) cursed effeminate men (those men who are in the similitude (assume the manners of women) and those women who assume the manners of men, and he said, "Turn them out of your houses ." The Prophet (ﷺ) turned out such-and-such man, and `Umar turned out such-and-such woman.”

“It is not for a believing man or woman—when Allah and His Messenger decree a matter—to have any other choice in that matter. Indeed, whoever disobeys Allah and His Messenger has clearly gone far astray.”

“As for female and male fornicators, give each of them one hundred lashes, and do not let pity for them make you lenient in enforcing the law of Allah, if you truly believe in Allah and the Last Day. And let a number of believers witness their punishment.”

Narrated Zaid bin Khalid and Abu Huraira: The Prophet (ﷺ) said, "O Unais! Go to the wife of this (man) and if she confesses (that she has committed illegal sexual intercourse), then stone her to death."

“Men are the caretakers of women, as men have been provisioned by Allah over women and tasked with supporting them financially. And righteous women are devoutly obedient and, when alone, protective of what Allah has entrusted them with. And if you sense ill-conduct from your women, advise them first, if they persist, do not share their beds, but if they still persist, then discipline them gently. But if they change their ways, do not be unjust to them. Surely Allah is Most High, All-Great.”

“Settle in your homes, and do not display yourselves as women did in the days of pre-Islamic ignorance. Establish prayer, pay alms-tax, and obey Allah and His Messenger. Allah only intends to keep the causes of evil away from you and purify you completely, O members of the Prophet’s family!”