Taliban have 'grown up', should be given a chance, says UK Sharia Council scholar

• UK Shariah Council scholar says Taliban did not have any exposure to the modern world 25 years ago as they lived in the mountains.
• Says every single person that she knows as a Muslim has been celebrating the return of the Taliban.
• Says western media is obsessed with the misrepresentation of Muslims.

A scholar of the United Kingdom Shariah Council has said that the Taliban should be given a chance as they have "grown up," The Daily Mail reported Sunday.

Per the article, Sharia Council scholar Khola Hasan today told BBC Radio 4 that British Muslims are "celebrating" the return of the group to power.

Since taking control of Afghanistan last week, the Taliban have said that they would not adopt their previous hardline policies against the Afghans. They said that they would grant amnesty to all those who worked with the Americans and vowed not to violate women's rights in the country.

The report stated Khola as saying that the group's "recent posturing on women's rights was a good start" and that  "every single person" that she knows as a Muslim was "celebrating their return."

"They have been ruled by foreigners for 40 years, let the people of Afghanistan rule their own country and determine their own fate for a change," she said.

When Khola was questioned about reports emerging from Afghanistan of women and children being beaten and whipped as they pass through checkpoints in Afghanistan,  she said that such "minor incidents" should not be made into something huge and western media should understand that Afghanistan is a "tribal society with tribal loyalties" with "a lot of violence within the communities amid decades of occupation."

She also went on to say that the western media is obsessed with the misrepresentation of Muslims. 

"The kind of language that came out from Western media when the Taliban took over — civil war, monsters, they're going to slaughter people, it's going to be awful, poor women, oh blah blah blah we're going to cry our eyes out, poor women are going back into Medieval times, and all the rest of it."

"It's been misrepresented for so long that I've got used to it, I don't even blink an eyelid anymore," she said.

Khola said that the Taliban have grown up, adding that they did not have any exposure to the modern world 25 years ago as they lived in the mountains and had no education or knowledge about Islam itself.

"They're learning. That's not an easy thing to do, to come from hundreds of years of one way practising your faith, and then suddenly exposed to different ways to think oh maybe we got it wrong. The problem is we don't give them a chance," she said, per the publication.