The Taliban’s Exploitation of Religion: Coercion in the Name of Faith

When Muhammad Hassan Ilyas, Director of Research & Communication at the Ghamidi Center of Islamic Learning, addressed a United Nations side event during the 80th General Assembly session in New York, his remarks struck a nerve. The session, titled “The Taliban’s Political and Social Exploitation of Religion and Its Effects,” brought together more than 200 ministers, diplomats, and global experts. In that hall, Ilyas issued a stark warning: the Taliban have turned Islam into a weapon.

By cloaking their political project in religious rhetoric, he argued, the Taliban have systematically stripped Afghans—particularly women and children—of their most basic rights. True Islam, he reminded the audience, rests on justice, mercy, and consultation. The Taliban’s model rests on coercion and fear. This was not a narrow critique of one regime, but a caution about a global danger: once religion is successfully weaponized, it can inspire imitators far beyond Afghanistan’s borders.

To evaluate the accuracy of Ilyas’s claims, one need only look at the Taliban’s policies since their return to power in 2021. From codified morality laws to sweeping restrictions on women, from the weaponization of the justice system to public spectacles of violence, their governance model shows how religion can be distorted into a machinery of control.

Codifying Coercion: The “Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice” Law

Few policies better illustrate the Taliban’s use of religion as a weapon than the Law on the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (PVPV), formally promulgated on 21 August 2024.⁴⁵This law builds on the Taliban’s earlier reliance on the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, a body notorious during their first rule in the 1990s for beating women in the streets and enforcing puritanical rules. The new law empowers morality inspectors to detain individuals for up to three days, confiscate or destroy property deemed “un-Islamic,” and enforce broad prohibitions. Images of living beings, music, and public gatherings considered contrary to the Taliban’s interpretation of Islam are all targeted. Women must wear hijab covering the face; their voices are banned from public broadcast.⁴⁶ According to UNAMA’s April 2025 report, the Taliban have already deployed more than 3,300 inspectors across 28 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces.⁴⁷ The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has called the law “a regressive framework that affirms the Taliban’s agenda and invites abuse.”⁴⁸ Here we see Ilyas’s point confirmed: the principle of “enjoining good and forbidding evil,” a Qurʾanic concept meant to encourage communal ethics, has been hollowed out and turned into a mechanism of fear. Religion becomes not moral guidance, but a codified tool of coercion.

The Systematic Erasure of Women and Girls

From the very first weeks after retaking Kabul, the Taliban signaled their intent to erase women from public life. In September 2021, they barred girls from attending secondary schools. In December 2022, they expanded the ban to universities, cutting off millions of Afghan women from education.⁴⁹ By 2023, women were also prohibited from working in NGOs and, later, for the United Nations inside Afghanistan.⁵⁰

UN Women has documented more than 70 formal edicts, directives, and statements targeting women: restrictions on work, travel, dress, even the sound of their voices.⁵¹ Women cannot use public transport without permission, cannot speak on radio, cannot appear on television except under tightly controlled conditions. As the International Commission of Jurists noted in 2023, these measures amount to “gender persecution”—a crime against humanity under the Rome Statute.⁵²

A recent report by the Afghan organization Farageer, Alarm Bell, documents the testimonies of 700 citizens, including 600 women from 14 provinces, regarding the consequences of Taliban rule. The report argues that the Taliban have “deliberately instrumentalized religion as a tool of political control”, using restrictions on women to enforce a system of “gender apartheid.”⁵³ It highlights that while bans on girls’ education are well known, the expansion of religious schools has also been dramatic: from approximately 5,000 in 2021 to more than 22,000 in recent years.⁵⁴ The report further documents arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances, forced marriages, and extreme economic pressures on households headed by women.⁵⁵

This evidence reinforces Ilyas’s thesis: Taliban rule is not simply an accidental byproduct of tradition but an intentional political design that distorts religion to sustain domination.

Weaponizing the Justice System

Equally telling is the Taliban’s transformation of Afghanistan’s justice system. Female judges and prosecutors were dismissed immediately after the takeover. The 2004 constitution was suspended. Courts now operate on decrees issued by the Taliban’s leadership, interpreted exclusively by male clerics loyal to the regime. A joint UN Women, UNAMA, and IOM report in 2024 described Afghan women as “virtually powerless in a justice system devoid of gender equality.” Survivors of gender-based violence, once able to appeal to specialized units and shelters, now have nowhere to turn. Instead, they risk being prosecuted themselves for “moral crimes.” The American Society of International Law concluded that the Taliban have “actively weaponized Afghanistan’s legal system.” Instead of protecting citizens, law is used to dominate and silence. This is precisely what Ilyas meant when he warned that the Taliban’s model replaces consultation with coercion: religious authority becomes a cover for systemic injustice.

Silencing the Counter-Narrative: Media and Information Control

No authoritarian project survives without controlling information, and the Taliban are acutely aware of this. The PVPV law explicitly prohibits media that “insults Muslims” or “contradicts Shariah.” In practice, this has meant banning music, shutting down newspapers, and forbidding images of living beings.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has documented arrests of journalists, the closure of at least a dozen outlets in 2024 alone, and widespread intimidation that has pushed reporters into exile.⁵⁶ Afghanistan now ranks among the worst countries globally for press freedom. In September 2025, internet services were deliberately shut down in several northern provinces under the pretext of combating “immorality.”⁵⁷ By monopolizing religious discourse and silencing alternatives, the Taliban ensure their interpretation of religion is the only one heard, undermining precisely the consultative ethos that Islam emphasizes.

Religion as Spectacle: Public Punishments

Since their return, the Taliban have revived practices that horrify the international community: public floggings, amputations, and executions. These events are staged in stadiums or public squares, with citizens forced to watch. In December 2022, a man was executed before hundreds of onlookers at a football stadium in Farah Province after being accused of murder. UNAMA has recorded dozens of public floggings, often of women, for charges ranging from adultery to immoral behavior. The Taliban present these punishments as enforcement of Shariah, but their function is also symbolic. They project fear, reinforce obedience, and conflate religious piety with public terror.

Here again, coercion stands where consultation should. Islam’s jurisprudence historically emphasized procedural justice, mercy, and restrictions that made such punishments exceedingly rare. The Taliban strip away those nuances, wielding law as spectacle.

Exploiting Children and Youth

Perhaps the most chilling element of Taliban governance is their treatment of children and youth. By denying girls an education and indoctrinating boys with narrow religious curricula, they are shaping a generation to accept coercion as natural. The Farageer report also warns of the “unprecedented expansion” in religious schooling, which functions as a complement to the Taliban’s strict control of education.⁵⁸ The shift means that for each new modern school, 85 religious schools are being created, a scale that channels children into ideologically aligned systems rather than open, critical education.

Instead of fostering critical thinking and scientific knowledge, curricula are heavily infused with ideology designed to produce conformity. For boys, that often means loyalty to the Taliban’s armed project; for girls, it means silence and invisibility. This is the long game of religious weaponization: shaping future generations to normalize oppression in the name of faith.

Why This Matters Globally

Ilyas’s warning in New York was clear: the Taliban’s exploitation of religion is not just Afghanistan’s tragedy. It is a template that could spread. Human Rights Watch has documented how anti-rights movements elsewhere cite the Taliban as inspiration, pointing to their success in reversing women’s freedoms despite global pressure.⁵⁹ The Taliban’s survival, despite sanctions and condemnation, sends a message: it is possible to impose religious authoritarianism and withstand international outrage. The Farageer findings underscore how the Taliban’s model is not accidental but intentional: religion is distorted to legitimize political control and institutionalize gender segregation.⁶⁰ This intensifies Ilyas’s argument that countering this threat requires more than condemnation—it demands an intellectual and educational resistance that can pierce the theological mask and reveal the politics beneath.

The Alternative: Reclaiming Religion from Weaponization

What, then, is the solution? Ilyas’s answer is both pragmatic and profound. The confrontation with the Taliban cannot be purely military. Bombs and sanctions may weaken, but they cannot dislodge an ideology rooted in the exploitation of religion. Instead, the response must be intellectual and educational. Scholars who emphasize Islam’s ethics of justice and mercy must be supported. Women and youth voices must be amplified. Fabricated fatwas—those religious decrees engineered to justify oppression—must be exposed. The oppressed must be protected not only physically but intellectually, by reclaiming the narrative of Islam as a faith of compassion and reason. This is not simply Afghanistan’s task. It is a responsibility shared by the global Muslim community, international institutions, and all who value human dignity. If the Taliban’s model is allowed to stand unchallenged, it risks becoming the template for other authoritarian actors seeking to exploit faith for power. Conclusion: Beyond Afghanistan

Muhammad Hassan Ilyas’s address to the United Nations was not the first warning about the Taliban, nor will it be the last. But it was among the clearest articulations of what is at stake. The Taliban have not merely governed Afghanistan badly; they have weaponized religion, turning a faith of justice into an instrument of fear.

The PVPV law, the exclusion of women, the weaponization of justice, the silencing of media, the public spectacles of violence, the indoctrination of children, all these policies prove his point. Religion, in Taliban hands, is not guidance but a mask for oppression.

The task before the world, then, is to ensure that this mask is torn away. To show that Islam’s true spirit is mercy, not coercion; consultation, not domination. And to amplify the voices—of scholars, of women, of youth—who are already carrying that message, often at great personal risk. The Taliban’s weaponization of religion is a threat not just to Afghanistan but to the credibility of religion in the modern world. Meeting that threat requires more than condemnation. It requires the courage to build, amplify, and protect an alternative.