Taliban ban women from coffee shops

Women and girls without a close male relative accompanying them were banned from entering coffee shops in Afghanistan's Herat province, Raha Press reported.

Sheikh Azizi ur Rahman Al-Mohajer, the head of virtue and vice of the Taliban office in Herat, said from now on playing music and women and girls without a ‘mahram' (relative) are forbidden, the report said.

He said criminals are also not allowed in coffee shops. According to him, most insecurities, kidnappings, robberies and destructive actions can be planned in such coffee shops.

"The coffee shop owners are warned if any instruction violations are reported, they will be faced with legal actions," Al-Mohajer said, adding that coffee shops can be remain open till 9.30 p.m.

According to him, these coffee shops serve as a convenient place for most of the moral corruption something has misled the youths in Herat. He emphasised any decree on closing all coffee shops in Herat can be issued from Kabul.

This comes as recently after all mannequins were beheaded as they resembled idols, an instruction from the Taliban government that caused lot of public opposition.

Nearly five months after regaining power, the Taliban's Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice has reclaimed its role as the enforcer of the group's radical interpretation of Islamic law, RFE/RL



reported.

In a spate of decrees issued in recent weeks, the Ministry has imposed restrictions on the behaviour, movement, and appearances of residents, particularly those of women and girls. While the militants have claimed the decrees are only recommendations, Taliban religious police have enforced the new laws, sometimes violently, in many areas.

Many Afghans have voiced their anger at the Taliban's religious policing, saying it is a tool for humiliating citizens and controlling every aspect of their lives.

For Afghans, the decrees are reminiscent of the draconian rules the Taliban imposed during its brutal rule from 1996 to 2001.

Obaidullah Baheer, a Kabul-based academic, said by forcing its own interpretation of Sharia law upon Afghans, the Taliban is "locking out the population from decision-making" and exposing its "tyrannical tendencies", the report added.

Baheer said the Taliban views "any challenge to (its) policies as a challenge to the faith itself".

Last month, the Taliban ordered shop owners in the western city of Herat to cut off the heads of mannequins, insisting they were un-Islamic.

The order angered local shopkeepers, who are already reeling from an economic crisis triggered by the Taliban takeover and the sudden halt in international assistance.