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Afghanistan’s Taliban morality ministry says it will implement a new law that bans any photo that depicts a living thing from being published. This rule applies to everyone, including the media.
The Telegraph reports that a similar law was in place during the previous Taliban rule from 1996 to 2001 and while Taliban officials in Kandahar were banned from taking photos and videos of living things now that the Taliban has returned to power, it did not apply to news media. That changes now.
“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 (PVPV), tells Agence France-Presse, The Telegraph reports.
Khyber says that Taliban officials will work to persuade Afghani people that images of living things are against Islamic law.
“Until now, regarding the articles of the law related to media, there are ongoing efforts in many provinces to implement it, but that has not started in all provinces,” he continues. Speaking of its expansion across all of Afghanistan, Khyber adds, “Now it applies to everyone.”
The news was shared with local journalists during a meeting on Monday, where the Taliban told them that the Taliban’s “morality police” would start gradually enforcing the law. They advised photographers and photojournalists to take images and video from rather away and to film fewer events to “get in the habit” of not showing living things on camera.
The Telegraph shows that some business owners are already taking the law seriously and are painting over or blurring out the eyes of animals, such as fish, on restaurant menus in order to comply with the law.
According to Wikipedia, the Quran itself does not prohibit visual representations of living things, but the hadith collection of the Shih Bukhari (work that is valued among Muslims as nearly as valuable as the Quran) explicitly prohibits making any images of living being, which seems to stem at least in part from the prohibition of idolatry and from the belief that the creation of living forms is God’s prerogative, not man’s.
Such a law is convenient for the Taliban, which is ranked 122nd place to 178th out of 180 countries in a press freedom ranking compiled by Reporters Without Borders, as showing images of those who enact these harsh laws is now illegal, making tying a face to a name all the more difficult.
Image credits: Header photo licensed via Depositphotos.