“TRY TO TAKE as much pain as you can stand,” urged Mahbooba Rezahi, 17, the instructor of the only martial arts class for girls in the Afghan capital. “Breathe deeply ... keep your elbows bent.” She glanced up from a deep bend with a mock frown. “No giggling!”

There were only nine students in Rezahi’s tae kwon do class at the Afghan Youth Club this morning — a fraction of the 300 boys who attend its martial arts classes in the evenings. There were 13 girls participating until last week, when police came and locked the clubhouse doors twice, unnerving some of the teenage students and their parents.

Vigorous exercise, long an unquestioned staple of education for young people of both sexes in the West and in much of the developing world, is still highly controversial for girls in Afghanistan, a deeply traditional Muslim society where modesty of dress and manner, and provable virginity at marriage, are expected of all young women under penalty of intense social ostracism...

...Perhaps not surprisingly, the impetus for the club has come from Afghan refugees who recently returned from long exile in Iran, a Muslim country where girls and women have far more opportunities for self-development. Rezahi, the instructor, lived most of her life in Iran; so did the club’s male founder, Sayed Jawad Hussaini, 31, who returned from Iran last year...