The Taliban regime is set to ban Afghan women from playing cricket and other sports where their bodies might be seen, a senior official has said.
In an interview with the Australian broadcaster SBS, the deputy head of the Taliban’s cultural commission, Ahmadullah Wasiq, said women’s sport was considered neither appropriate nor necessary.
Per The Guardian, he said: "I don't think women will be allowed to play cricket because it is not necessary that women should play cricket."
Watch Ahmadullah Wasiq's interview with SBS here:
Wasiq spoke to SBS as the Afghan men's team prepares to visit Australia for a test match in November. But when the outlet asked about the future of the national women's team, the Taliban official suggested that the future is bleak.
"In cricket, they might face a situation where their face and body will not be covered. Islam does not allow women to be seen like this," he said, according to SBS.
"It is the media era, and there will be photos and videos, and then people watch it. Islam and the Islamic Emirate do not allow women to play cricket or play the kind of sports where they get exposed," Wasiq said.
Meanwhile, a member of the women's team recently told BBC Sport: "Every woman playing cricket or other sports is not safe right now. The situation is very bad in Kabul."
The Taliban's position could threaten Afghanistan's standing in the sports world. The International Cricket Council requires countries to have women's teams to qualify for full membership - a status Afghanistan reached in 2017.
It comes as universities have reopened in Afghanistan, however, the Taliban has made a strict rule of segregating men and women in classrooms.
Images taken by journalists in Kabul’s Ibn-e Sina University have circulated on social media, showing male and female students sat in the same room but separated by a curtain during the first day of the new semester.
Female students are required to wear the abaya robe and niqab covering and enter via a separate entrance to male students.
According to guidance published by the Taliban’s Ministry of Higher Education, female students are also set to remain in "waiting rooms" between classes so as not to encounter male students.
