The Afghan Taliban this week formally codified a long set of moral rules, ranging from requiring women to cover their faces and men to grow beards to banning car drivers from playing music, the Justice Ministry said.
The rules, which are promoted as being in line with Islamic Sharia law and to be enforced by the morality ministry, were based on a decree by the Taliban’s supreme spiritual leader in 2022 and have now been formally published as law, a justice ministry official said, Reuters reported.
The Ministry of Morality, officially called the Ministry for the Prevention of Vice and the Promotion of Virtue, has enforced such moral standards and says it has detained thousands of people for violating them. It was not immediately clear whether the publication of the rules would lead to increased compliance.
The Taliban have banned women from speaking in public. The Taliban consider a woman’s voice intimate, so they have banned women from speaking out loud in public – this is only allowed with relatives or a man.
The Taliban’s restrictions on women and freedom of expression have drawn sharp criticism from rights groups and many foreign governments since the former insurgents regained control of Afghanistan in 2021.
Day after day they try to erase women from society,” said a 37-year-old housewife from Kabul.
The international community’s silence on the Taliban’s actions encourages them to create new laws and restrictions every day, added the woman, who gave only her first name, Halema.
Western capitals, led by Washington, have said the path to official recognition of the Taliban is stalled until they change course on women’s rights and open secondary schools to girls.
The Taliban say they respect women’s rights in accordance with their interpretation of Islamic law and local customs, and that these are internal issues that should be resolved locally.
The 35-article morality law was formally passed and published on Wednesday after it was ratified by Supreme Spiritual Leader Haibatullah Akhundzada, Justice Ministry spokesman Barakatullah Rasoli said.
According to this law, the Ministry (of Prevention of Vices and Promotion of Virtue) is obliged to promote goodness and prohibit evil in accordance with Islamic Sharia, the Justice Ministry said in a statement.
The requirements require women to wear clothing that completely covers their bodies and faces, and prohibit men from shaving their beards and skipping prayer and religious fasts.
Punishments for violation included “advice, warnings of divine execution, verbal threats, confiscation of property, detention from one hour to three days in state prisons and any other punishment that may be considered appropriate,” the Justice Department added.
If such measures fail to correct the individual’s behavior, he or she will be referred to court for further action, the statement said.
Many of these rules were already in place, but less formally, and now they are formalized. I think this is a sign of what we have seen over the last three years, which is a steady and gradual escalation of repression,” said Heather Barr, deputy women’s rights director at Human Rights Watch.
The laws also instruct drivers of vehicles not to transport women without a male guardian. They require media outlets to comply with Sharia law and prohibit the publication of images of living beings.
Morale Ministry officials have spent the past three years monitoring Afghans across the country for possible wrongdoing. The ministry said this week that more than 13,000 people were detained last year, although it did not disclose the suspected crimes or the gender of those detained. About half of the detentions were for 24 hours, it said.
The Taliban suspended Afghanistan’s previous constitution when they took power in 2021 following the withdrawal of foreign troops and said they would rule the country under Sharia law.
The moral laws passed this week were the seventh set of codified laws, according to the Justice Department, with others covering property, financial services and preventing begging.
Source: Racurs
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