The Islam expert Prof. Susanne Schröter (Frankfurt on the Main) has contradicted statements made by the Social Democratic Party (SPD) politician Sawsan Chebli (Berlin). The Muslim woman had posted a video on Twitter showing girls in Afghanistan protesting for their right to education. The background is that the Taliban have forbidden girls from the seventh grade to attend school.
Chebli praised the girls’ courage and wrote about the ban: “This has nothing to do with Islam. Men want to keep women down and control them.” Prof. Schröter sees it differently. The exclusion of girls from further schooling in Afghanistan is justified exclusively on Islamic grounds, she said in response to a question from the Protestant news agency IDEA.
According to her, the Taliban have introduced Sharia as the “basis of the normative order” in Afghanistan: “In their interpretation of the law, they follow the Sunni Deobandi school, whose teachers understand the subordination of women to men and a strict separation of the sexes as a divine order.” The Taliban see the complete separation of girls and boys as necessary to prevent “sinful activities”. In their view, this cannot be guaranteed when older girls attend school, which is why they forbid it.
Schröter states: “With this view, the Taliban are in line with the religious interpretations of many Muslim scholars.” Schröter is a professor of ethnology at Goethe University Frankfurt and heads the Frankfurt Research Centre Global Islam. Chebli was Plenipotentiary of the State of Berlin to the Federal Government and State Secretary for Civic Engagement and International Affairs in the Berlin State Chancellery from 2016 to 2021.
https://www.idea.de/artikel/islamexpertin-widerspricht-muslimischer-spd-politikerin