Taliban’s religious police reportedly burned a number of musical instruments in the western province of Herat, according to a Sunday report by the state-run news agency Bakhtar.
Sheikh Aziz al-Rahman al-Muhajir, the provincial head of the Ministry of Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, said music led to “misguidance of the youth and the destruction of society,” according to the report.
People could be corrupted, according to the official. The Taliban banned nonreligious music the last time it ruled the country in the 1990s.
Pictures show officials gathered around a fire with musical instruments, including guitars, harmoniums and speakers. A pile of musical instruments burn as the Taliban imposes new restrictions on music
Afghanistan has a strong musical tradition, influenced by Iranian and Indian classical music.
It also has a thriving pop music scene, adding electronic instruments and dance beats to more traditional rhythms.
Both flourished in the past 20 years before the Taliban stormed to power in 2021.
But the Taliban has imposed harsh measures since seizing control of Afghanistan in August 2021 as US and NATO forces withdrew.
Students and teachers of the Afghanistan National Institute of Music, which was once famous for its inclusiveness, have not returned to classes since the Taliban takeover. Many musicians have also fled the country.
Taliban’s crackdown on women’s rights
The Taliban promised a more moderate rule than that of their previous time in power in the 1990s. They had promised to allow for women’s and minority rights. But instead, they reintroduced harsh measures in line with their strict interpretation of Islamic law, or Sharia.
They have carried out public executions, banned education for girls beyond the sixth grade and also banned women from most forms of employment.
Earlier this week, the Taliban announced that all beauty salons ought to be closed because they offered services forbidden by Islam and caused economic hardship for the families of grooms during wedding festivities.
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Let’s stop for a minute and think. If their version of god an religion were true, would you really like to worship an asshole god who hates music or anything fun?
Might as well go to hell. At least they’d have music.
I know. Not really about god, but about control.
I really wonder if people like this have a playbook, like have they read history and put together a step by step guide at this point for maximizing assholery, or does behavior like this sort of emerge naturally as the assholes take control? Like why do we see this over and over in authoritarian regimes, is it natural or are they copycats?
Sidebar: today I learned the word assholery is a real word, I thought I just made it up lol
This is the society Afghans want. They were given 20 years to build a foundation against a re-emergence of Taliban. They choose corruption and paper soldiers.
Never have a so large army been beaten to fast with so few bullets fired.
If they want to live in a religious hellhole. Let them.
I have buddies that served in Afghanistan and what I’ll share will sound shitty, but reality sometimes is simply shitty.
The country is just full of uneducated superstitious, goat herders. There isn’t real allegiance to “Afghanistan” as a country, so building a unified democracy is/was pretty much impossible.
They were training Afghan troops but would never turn their backs on them lol, they said they’d frequently try to pull shit and the concept of discipline, leadership that you need for a stable military / police simply isn’t in the culture.
People were hoping for post ww2 Germany, but Germany was a country filled with educated people with a history of order Afghanistan has just been tribes at war for decades… There was no way to make it work.
That’s not to say that Afghanistan doesn’t have good people in it that just want peace feed their family and live, but at its current state it’s not going to be anything but a theocratic hell hole.
The podcast Through line episode 199 and 200 covers this pretty good. Episode 199 is called Afghanistan: the center of the world.
Great listen.
