If that is the center of Islam, then why don't they wear burkhas?" He concluded, with a rueful smile, "I think the burkha is just an old-fashioned Afghan custom".
It's time for my wife to be seen with me in public without having to wear a burkha".
Zarmeena wears a burkha when she is in public, but inside her office she simply wears a scarf over her hair.
Salahuddin, like Nazir, said that his father had not been responsible for the introduction of the burkha and other Islamic social restrictions.
As for the burkha, she believes that it is officially required in Northern Alliance territory.
One afternoon in Dasht-e-Qala, two women, one in a deep-violet burkha and the other wearing emerald green, floated past, briefly enlivening the backdrop of beat-up olive-green military vehicles, brown desert, and dusty shop fronts.
"He seemed very strict; he tried to persuade people to pray and ordered women to wear Islamic coverings" — although not the burkha, which many rural women wore anyway.
I asked Rabbani why, in the part of Afghanistan under his control, women wore the burkha.
"The burkha is not a part of the Islamic tradition," he said.
Here the burkha is worn because of tradition.
