Taliban to ban images of ‘living things’

The Islamic group that controls Afghanistan is seeking to impose strict Sharia law across the country

The Taliban has promised to enforce a ban on images of humans and animals in the Afghan media as part of the Islamist group’s wider campaign to implement Sharia law across the country.

Although the Taliban initially promised to be more moderate right after seizing power in 2021, the group has since imposed many restrictions, including the removal of images of women from public spaces and banning “immoral” films and musical instruments. 

“The law applies to all Afghanistan… and it will be implemented gradually,” Saiful Islam Khyber, the spokesman for the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, told AFP on Monday.

Khyber claimed that “coercion has no place in the implementation of the law,” adding that officials would focus on persuading people that the depiction of living things was “really contrary” to Islamic law. 

Taliban officials and government agencies, as well as media outlets working in the country, continue to regularly post photos of people on their website and social media. Khyber, however, told AFP that Afghan authorities have begun to work on the implementation of restrictions in some provinces. 

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Officials in the southern Kandahar province previously ordered not to take pictures or videos of “living things,” but the rule did not extend to the media. In February 2024, AFP quoted Mohammad Hashem Shaheed Wror, a senior official in the Justice Ministry, as instructing staff that “taking pictures is a major sin.” 

Having ruled most of the civil war-plagued Afghanistan in the 1990s, the Taliban was driven out of major cities during the 2001 US-led invasion, which came in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The group then led a 20-year guerilla war against American troops and the UN-backed government in Kabul. The Taliban recaptured the Afghan capital during the final stage of the withdrawal of Western forces in August 2021, forcing President Ashraf Ghani to flee the country.

The Taliban government has not been recognized by the UN, but maintains working ties with several countries, including Russia.