The Taliban Has Not Banned Sanitary Napkins
The Claim
The Taliban has banned the use of sanitary napkins in Afghanistan, saying it is not Sharia-compliant.
News posted on
Emerging story
MENA: A screenshot of an alleged CNN article has been spreading on social media, with the misspelled headline, “Taliban bans sanitory [sic] napkins in Afghanistan, says it’s not a Sharia complaint [sic] practice.” The accompanying image shows a woman wearing a red hijab, standing in a grocery aisle in front of pink and purple packages of sanitary napkins.
Misbar’s Analysis
MENA: CNN has made no such report that the Taliban has banned sanitary napkins, nor used the above image in any of their coverage. The headline in the circulating image has been altered, and contains misspellings of the words “sanitary” and “compliant.” The image has been used as a stock photograph on several blogs and news sites, but not on CNN.
The false claim is circulating weeks after the Taliban’s return to power, which has left many Afghan women fearful that their own progress towards equality will be threatened. When the Taliban held power in the past, women were not allowed to hold jobs or leave their homes without a male escort, and girls could not attend school. Those who defied these rules were often subjected to brutal punishments. After a month of their return to power, the Taliban hopes to present a more moderate reputation to the world and they have said that women will be allowed to study in gender-segregated universities, and continue to hold jobs. But women are already making reports on losing their jobs, implementations of new dress codes, bans on women in sports, and orders to stay at home.
