Why are the Taliban so afraid of women ?

The Taliban’s fear of women is not a literal fear in the personal sense, but a political and ideological one. Their suppression of women stems from a deep-rooted anxiety about social control, cultural purity, and the maintenance of a rigid, patriarchal order. Here’s a breakdown of why the Taliban treat women as such a threat:

1. Women Represent Social Change
Educated, visible, and empowered women are a sign of modernization and secularism—precisely the forces the Taliban want to crush. Women attending school, working, or speaking out in public contradict the Taliban’s fundamentalist vision of an Islamic society. They symbolize a liberal, pluralistic world order that threatens their rigid interpretation of Islam.

2. Female Autonomy Challenges Patriarchy
The Taliban’s ideology is built on a strict hierarchy, with men at the top. A woman who asserts her independence—by seeking education, working, or appearing in public without a male guardian—undermines that hierarchy. In this worldview, women must be controlled because female autonomy is disruptive to the male-dominated social structure.

3. Sexual Control is Social Control
In Taliban ideology, women's bodies are viewed as sources of temptation and chaos. By veiling women, restricting their movements, and denying them public space, the Taliban claim to “protect” moral order. But in reality, it’s about control: over desire, over family honor, and ultimately over society. It's an anxious obsession with maintaining authority through gender segregation.

4. Educated Women are Political Threats
Women who are literate, organized, and politically engaged—whether as teachers, journalists, activists, or lawmakers—pose a direct threat to Taliban rule. Educated women have historically led resistance movements in Afghanistan. They can rally communities, speak to the world, and expose abuse. Silencing them is a form of authoritarian self-preservation.

5. Female Empowerment Undermines Theocratic Legitimacy
The Taliban claim religious legitimacy by enforcing their interpretation of Sharia law. But Islam is not monolithic, and many Muslim scholars argue for women's education, rights, and public participation. Empowered women expose the Taliban’s distortion of Islam, revealing that their rule is about power, not piety. That delegitimization terrifies them.

6. Symbolic Control Over Women Projects Power
In regimes like the Taliban’s, the treatment of women is not just about belief—it’s performative. Enforcing harsh restrictions on women is a way of asserting dominance over society as a whole. It sends a message: We are in control. We dictate what is permissible. Even your private life is ours to govern.

In short, the Taliban fear women because empowered women challenge every pillar of their authority: ideological, political, religious, and social. It’s not the woman herself they fear—it’s what she represents: a future that does not need them.

Same reason that the GOP is, here. With equal civil rights women achieve, and make significant societal changes. So enough have to be convinced that they don’t want personal power or equal rights and opportunities. Then all of them can be controlled. 😞

I think many conservative men are afraid of women. When you consider our superior numbers and a legacy of centuries of violence and oppression, it's perhaps not surprising . .

Its the usual reason. The men feel the need to shore up their own insecurities by oppressing someone weaker. You see it all over the place.😷

Almost every religion share a major trait:
Male dominate, female submissive to the point of slavery in some cases.

This isn't new. Adam #1 ...Eve #2.
Eve gets the blame for allowing sin into the world, so off we go.

From scripture the pulpit, the message is clear.
Women submit to your husband, even if it puts your life in danger. Know your place, and that place isn't on an equal plane.

I don't think they're afraid of women, they're afraid of losing power and being questioned in their choices

i wish they didnt destroy the rock carving of buddha

They’re not as much afraid of them as their religious beliefs may well be of such a mindset that they are told to believe they are superior to women.

They are afraid of women being empowered and having choice. The fear is that those choices may be other than being subservient.

Words to live by, dont piss off the person who sleeps next to you or makes your food.

They are afraid of what will happen when they give “freedom” to women. What has happened in the West? The Taliban does not want it. Society has fallen apart since women were allowed to vote and enter the political realm. They go for feminism, abortion, homosexuality and transsexuality, immigration, and other things that are corrosive to the nation. Their worst crime is that they have destroyed the family, the most precious thing that we have.

Fragile masculinity and a smattering of religious fundamentalism.

The surest way to guarantee your access to power,wealth, and resources has always been to implement a caste system with your demographic at or near the top. By creating castes and hierarchies with your group at or near the top you ensure an abundance of resources, power, and wealth for your demographic to feed off of in much bigger slices.

This is pretty much the foundation of all castes and hierarchies the world over throughout history. To deny one is to increase the bounty of excessive for the other..

The secret to setting up, and continuing with, a cult / religion is to have an identifiable group you can blame and persecute.

Religious fundamentalism is always a bad thing. All the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) are strongly anti-female. It's right there in Genisis Book one.

Because we'll laugh, and they'll know we're laughing at them.

Cause they are their weakness

Because they fear women know the king is naked.

Because woman are smarter than any taliban
The entière economy of an afghan village is the ability of woman to manage a budget

they are not afraid .. they just like owning the woman as a slave and birthing machine