The rulers in Kabul have decreed that mannequins in shops should be beheaded, saying that they were “idols” and were forbidden in Islam.
According to a report in Business Insider, the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice this week instructed shopkeepers in Herat to behead the female figures.
The local department of the ministry cautioned that people who overlooked the decree would face dire penalties.
The ministry stated that it considered the people to be revering the figures as statues, while the Quran regards worshipping statues as an inexcusable crime.
The director of the local ministry stated that even viewing the female figure was contrary to Shariah dictates, as per the report of an Afghan news outlet.
An accommodation about only beheading the models was reached after a first command urged the total eradication of the figures.
The vendors were disappointed by the decapitation decree, quoting how costly the figures were. A vendor stated that the price of figures was $200 per figure, adding that beheading them was a huge waste for him.
After the victory of the Taliban in Kabul, the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice was restored in September. The all-men ministry substituted the ex-Ministry of Women Affairs, fueling concerns that the Taliban’s morality policing would wreck female rights in Afghanistan.
According to Sky News, the Ministry advised taxi drivers this week that they should not drive females on lengthy travels if they did not have any male accompanying them.
The original report appeared here
