Why Afghan women are singing to protest Taliban’s ban on women voices

LONDON -- Gazing into a mirror framed by a vase of bright flowers, Taiba Sulaimani begins to sing. The lyrics, in Farsi, offer a message of hope -- I will fly one day, I will be free one day.

Sulaimani is one of hundreds of Afghan women and allies around the world uploading videos of themselves singing on social media platforms. The videos are meant to protest a law passed by the Taliban last week banning women’s voices in public and mandating that they cover their entire bodies.

Women in Afghanistan are not allowed to show any skin, including their eyes. Before this law was passed, however, it was put forth as a recommendation -- not enforced -- and many women would show the upper half of their faces in public.

The new law “effectively [attempts] to render them into faceless, voiceless shadows,” a spokesperson for the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner said on Tuesday.

In response, women like Sulaimani are demonstrating that they refuse to be silenced.

“I recorded the video because I wanted to tell the Taliban, you can’t tell me what to do,” she told ABC News.

Sulaimani, who fled from Afghanistan to Canada three years ago after the Taliban regained power in 2021, didn't even get a chance to say goodbye to her family. But, even though she currently lives more than 10,000 miles away, the Taliban still tried to intimidate her, warning her by phone that they can’t do anything to her, but that she also shouldn’t forget her family is still in Afghanistan.

But, in defiance, this only motivated Sulaimani further.

“It makes me sure that I have to go ahead with power, even more than ever,” she told ABC News.

Elsewhere, an Afghan woman now living in Norway, Hoda Khamosh, echoed the sentiment.

“We came to the conclusion that every voice can become thousands, showing that we women are not just a few individuals who can be erased,” she said.

Khamosh, who founded the Afghan Women’s Justice Movement, posted a video of herself singing a revolutionary poem saying that if you close your doors on us, we will use the windows to make her voices heard.

“We do not go to the field with a gun, but our voice, our image," she said. "Protest is a war and a struggle.”

Even women inside Afghanistan are now recording videos of themselves singing, sometimes solo and sometimes in pairs or small groups, yet always wearing burqas that conceal their identities.

Zahra, a journalist in Afghanistan who asked only to be identified by her first name for her safety, said the situation on the ground is rapidly changing. Last week, there were many women outside, but since the passage of the law mandating women to veil their bodies, as well as their voices, she said the streets have emptied of women.

The new law now considers a woman's voice intimate and they are forbidden to sing, recite or read anything in public. This comes in addition to other regulations forbidding women to leave their houses alone or allowing them to look or speak to men who they're not related to by blood or marriage.

The combination of these restrictions makes leaving the home impractical at best, and even impossible in some cases. If a person violates the rules, they can be punished with a warning or be arrested, with a Taliban spokesperson saying the new law would "be of great help in the promotion of virtue and the elimination of vice."

Now, many male family members often instruct their female relatives to stay at home since they don’t want trouble, Zahra said.

“Sometimes we have nightmares that [the Taliban] will come and arrest us,” she said, citing common anecdotes of rape and torture in prisons.

Although hope alone may not seem meaningful to many Afghan women, some now feel empowered by the outpouring of global support in response to the videos of women singing. Now -- they hope -- the international community will step in and tangibly do something to help protect Afghan women.

“Please don’t leave us alone with the Taliban,” Sulaimani said. “We all need your support.”