However, the group’s ideology – its social, political and religious views – can easily spread anywhere because the ideas are not bound by context, time or history.

One global legacy of the Taliban is the view that women must be sent back into the home, based on a view that women are a source of social and moral problems in public spaces. Therefore, keeping them at home or restricting their space for movement using symbols such as the burqa or hijab is deemed a temporary solution to reduce moral problems in society.

From 2019 to 2020, Rumah KitaB conducted a study entitled Women and Fundamentalism in five regions: Jakarta, Bandung, Depok, Bekasi and Surakarta. The study examined a number of important factors related to the rise of an ideology that seeks to restrict the movement and thinking of women. The study produced a number of theses regarding the threat of violence, which has up to now been framed as an effort to prevent radicalism and terrorism with a masculine character. Using feminist methods and perspectives, the research arrived at very different findings.

The threat of violence is also experienced by women through efforts to “Talibanize” them, a view that tries to restrict and control women’s thinking, which restricts their space for movement in the name of creating social and moral order in society.

There is an emerging trend of views, teachings, pressure, conditioning, persuasion and coercion of women to return to the home and the family as a way to improve the structure of society, which some say has deviated from the “ideal” Islamic structure of society.

This, in essence, is the threat to women as identified through the research. Such narratives have, at the very least, narrowed the options for women regarding working, not working, or working but only in types of work and at times that are considered morally appropriate and in line with gender norms, rather than the option to work as a free choice. These restrictions are increasingly consolidating the marginalization of women.

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