KABUL – For six hours every day after school, Nahideh works in a cemetery, collecting water from a nearby shrine to sell to mourners visiting loved ones’ graves. She dreams of becoming a doctor — but knows it is a futile dream.

When the next school year starts, she will be enrolling in a madrassa, a religious school, to learn about the Quran and Islam — and little else.

“I prefer to go to school, but I can’t, so I will go to a madrassa,” she said, dark brown eyes peering out from beneath her tightly wrapped black headscarf. “If I could go to school then I could learn and become a doctor. But I can’t.”

At the age of 13, Nahideh is in the last grade of primary school, the limit of education allowed for girls in Afghanistan. The country’s Taliban government banned girls from secondary school and university three years ago — the only country in the world to do so. The ban is part of myriad restrictions on women and girls, dictating everything from what they can wear to where they can go and who they can go with.

With no option for higher education, many girls and women are turning to madrassas instead.

The only learning allowed

“Since the schools are closed to girls, they see this as an opportunity,” said Zahid-ur-Rehman Sahibi, director of the Tasnim Nasrat Islamic Sciences Educational Center in Kabul. “So, they come here to stay engaged in learning and studying religious sciences.”

The center’s roughly 400 students range in ages from about 3 to 60, and 90% are female. They study the Quran, Islamic jurisprudence, the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, and Arabic, the language of the Quran.

Most Afghans, Sahibi noted, are religious. “Even before the schools were closed, many used to attend madrassas,” he said. “But after the closure of schools, the interest has increased significantly, because the doors of the madrassas remain open to them.”

No recent official figures are available on the number of girls enrolled in madrassas, but officials say the popularity of religious schools overall has been growing. Last September, Deputy Minister of Education Karamatullah Akhundzada said at least 1 million students had enrolled in madrassas over the past year alone, bringing the total to over 3 million.

Studying the Quran

Sheltered from the heat of an early summer’s day in a basement room at the Tasnim Nasrat center, Sahibi’s students knelt at small plastic tables on the carpeted floor, their pencils tracing lines of Arabic script in their Qurans. All 10 young women wore black niqabs, the all-encompassing garment that includes a veil, leaving only the eyes visible.

“It is very good for girls and women to study at a madrassa, because … the Quran is the word of Allah, and we are Muslims,” said 25-year-old Faiza, who had enrolled at the center five months earlier. “Therefore, it is our duty to know what is in the book that Allah has revealed to us, to understand its interpretation and translation.”

Given a choice, she would have studied medicine. While she knows that is now impossible, she still harbors hope that if she shows she is a pious student dedicated to her religion, she will be eventually allowed to. The medical profession is one of the very few still open to women in Afghanistan.

“When my family sees that I am learning Quranic sciences and that I am practicing all the teachings of the Quran in my life, and they are assured of this, they will definitely allow me to continue my studies,” she said.

Her teacher said he’d prefer if women were not strictly limited to religious studies.

“In my opinion, it is very important for a sister or a woman to learn both religious sciences and other subjects, because modern knowledge is also an important part of society,” Sahibi said. “Islam also recommends that modern sciences should be learned because they are necessary, and religious sciences are important alongside them. Both should be learned simultaneously.”

A controversial ban

The female secondary and higher education ban has been controversial in Afghanistan, even within the ranks of the Taliban itself. In a rare sign of open dissent, Deputy Foreign Minister Sher Abbas Stanikzai said in a public speech in January that there was no justification for denying education to girls and women.

His remarks were reportedly not well tolerated by the Taliban leadership; Stanikzai is now officially on leave and is believed to have left the country. But they were a clear indication that many in Afghanistan recognize the long-term impact of denying education to girls.

“If this ban persists until 2030, over four million girls will have been deprived of their right to education beyond primary school,” UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said in a statement at the start of Afghanistan’s new school year in March. “The consequences for these girls — and for Afghanistan — are catastrophic. The ban negatively impacts the health system, the economy, and the future of the nation.”

The importance of religious education

For some in this deeply conservative society, the teachings of Islam are hard to overstate.

“Learning the Holy Quran is the foundation of all other sciences, whether it’s medicine, engineering, or other fields of knowledge,” said Mullah Mohammed Jan Mukhtar, 35, who runs a boys’ madrassa north of Kabul. “If someone first learns the Quran, they will then be able to learn these other sciences much better.”

His madrassa first opened five years ago with 35 students. Now it has 160 boys aged 5-21, half of whom are boarders. Beyond religious studies, it offers a limited number of other classes such as English and math. There is also an affiliated girls’ madrassa, which currently has 90 students, he said.

“In my opinion, there should be more madrassas for women,” said Mukhtar, who has been a mullah for 14 years. He stressed the importance of religious education for women. “When they are aware of religious verdicts, they better understand the rights of their husbands, in-laws and other family members.”

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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.