{"id":10818,"date":"2026-04-18T12:45:18","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T12:45:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/2026\/04\/18\/taliban-herat-university-students-hanafi-pledge-obedience\/"},"modified":"2026-04-18T12:45:18","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T12:45:18","slug":"taliban-herat-university-students-hanafi-pledge-obedience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/2026\/04\/18\/taliban-herat-university-students-hanafi-pledge-obedience\/","title":{"rendered":"Taliban Forces Herat University Students to Pledge Allegiance to Hanafi Sect"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sources at Herat University report that the Taliban administration has distributed a pledge form requiring students to officially commit to following the Hanafi school of thought and obeying the Taliban&#8217;s directives. According to these sources, signing this form is mandatory.<\/p>\n<p>The form was distributed among students on the morning of Saturday, April 18. Part of the document states that the signatory promises to comply with the Taliban administration&#8217;s orders and rulings.<\/p>\n<p>Clause six of the pledge, a copy of which has been obtained by media outlets, reads: &#8220;Given that the people of Afghanistan are Sunni Muslims and followers of the Hanafi school founded by Imam Abu Hanifa (may Allah have mercy on him), I too pledge to follow this school in order to maintain unity and harmony.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Universities are traditionally recognized as centers of intellectual and academic diversity. The recent move by the Taliban administration to condition continued education on accepting a specific religious interpretation and pledging obedience to its orders has raised concerns about restrictions on students&#8217; academic and personal freedoms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Taliban at Herat University mandate students to pledge allegiance to the Hanafi sect and obey directives, raising concerns over academic freedom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10817,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-important-news","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10818\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}