Mawlawi Abdul Kabir, Taliban’s acting prime minister, said that religious madrassa (seminary) graduates don’t have the ability and skills to work in government agencies in Afghanistan.

He said that in addition to religious studies, modern sciences should also be added to the seminary curriculum so that graduates of jihadi madrassas are able to work in such offices.

Mawlawi Abdul Kabir admitted to the shortcoming of seminaries in Afghanistan even though the Taliban has appointed mullahs with religious education to senior executive and technical positions of the group’s government.

According to the office of the Taliban’s prime minister, on Wednesday, Mawlawi Abdul Kabir met with Abdul Wahid Tariq, director of the jihadi seminaries. Tariq presented the programmes for establishing “jihadi madrassas in every province of Afghanistan” to the Taliban prime minister.

Tariq stressed that his directorate has been able to establish “jihadi madrassas in five provinces of Afghanistan and enrolled Taliban [members] as students of these seminaries”.

Abdul Kabir considered that the Taliban must pay attention to jihadi madrassas and said that seminaries are the “need of the day” in Afghanistan.

After the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban on August 2021, the group started establishing religious madrassas extensively across Afghanistan.

To expand their madrassas, the group has converted educational and historical places into jihadi madrassas too. In one of their latest moves, the Taliban established a jihadi school in the historic building and museum of Siraj-ul-Emarat.

Earlier, the Taliban changed buildings of the teacher training center of Samangan, the technical and vocational institute of Takhar, Mitra TV in Mazar-e-Sharif, Abdul Hai high school of Khost province, technical high school of Kandahar, Babrak Khan Zadran high school in Gardiz city and many other such centers to jihadi madrassas.