'Gender Apartheid': Safia Shah on Her Father's Stories, Hoopoe Books, and Afghanistan Today

Safia Shah grew up with the same tales her brother Tahir did — teaching stories passed down by their father, the writer and thinker Idries Shah. Those stories, she says, work differently at every stage of a life. As a child you understand one thing. As an adult, decades later, you find something else entirely waiting inside them. In this conversation, Tahir and Safia talk about what it meant to grow up in that tradition, how Hoopoe Books has distributed over five million illustrated editions of those stories in Afghanistan alone — and millions more in dozens of languages worldwide — and why that work feels more urgent now than ever. The UN has called the situation facing Afghan women today "gender apartheid." Safia doesn't flinch from the phrase. This conversation doesn't either. Hoopoe Books & Hoopoe Share: hoopoeshare.org Support Azada Women — the Scheherazade Foundation's campaign to fund internet access for women inside Afghanistan: crowdfunder.co.uk/p/azada-women 🌍 Learn more: sf.charity/azada-women 📧 Contact: [email protected] The Scheherazade Foundation is a UK-based cultural organisation harnessing the power of traditional stories and wisdom to address modern global challenges. #AfghanWomen #Afghanistan #AzadaWomen #WomensRights #HumanRights #Crowdfunder