Afghan women have started an online campaign using the hashtag #DoNotTouchMyClothes to challenge the Taliban’s conservative female clothing rules. Many Afghan women shared pictures of their colourful traditional dresses.
Dr Bahar Jalali, a former history professor at the American University in Afghanistan, used hashtags #DoNotTouchMyClothes and #AfghanistanCulture to reclaim Afghan women’s traditional clothes.
While posting a picture of herself on Twitter in a green Afghan dress, she stated: “This is Afghan culture. I am wearing a traditional Afghan dress.”
Referring to the women who wore long, fully veiled black gowns, covering their faces and hands at pro-Taliban rally, she tweeted: “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 the Taliban.”
After that, women across Afghanistan started posting pictures of themselves.
This campaign was also in reaction to a video in which many women holding a pro-Taliban rally in the capital were seen saying that Afghan women wearing make-up and in modern clothes do not represent the Muslim Afghan women and we don’t want women’s rights that are foreign, reports BBC.
Afghanistan’s Higher Education Minister Abdul Baqi Haqqani said that universities will be segregated and veils made mandatory for all female students. Earlier this month, the Taliban announced an all-male interim government.
