The Taleban Penal Code

The Taleban religious police enforced the decrees of Mullah Mohammad Omar to the letter. Prison sentences were handed out to people who traded during prayer time. Women who left home without the burqah, the total veil covering all the face, had her house marked and her husband was punished.

Men who allowed their hair to grow more than three centimetres were beaten, imprisoned and their head was shaved. If women sang during a wedding, the owner of the house was punished. Images and photographs were forbidden.

Classified as “impure things” were the following:

“Pork and its by-products, anything made from human hair, satellite antennae, the cinema, any equipment which could produce music, billiard tables, chess, masks, alcoholic drinks, ribbons, the computer, video cassettes, televisions, anything divulging sex, anything connected with music, wine, lobster, enamel, fireworks, statues, catalogues, images, Christmas Cards”.

No wonder there are scenes of delirium in the areas freed from this obscure sect, a mixture of Wahhabism, Pashtun lore and a perverse and individualistic reading of the Noble Qu’ran.

Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY PRAVDA.Ru