Taliban ban barbers in Helmand from shaving and trimming beards

Kabul: The new Taliban regime has banned hairdressers in Afghanistan`s Helmand province from shaving or trimming beards, a media report said. "The Taliban have banned stylish hairstyles and shaving beards in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan," The Frontier Post reported citing a letter from the Taliban.

The Taliban have banned barbers in of the region from shaving and trimming men’s beards because it “violates Islamic law.”

The publication further stated that officials from the Ministry of Islamic Orientation, at a meeting with representatives of men`s hairdressing salons in the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, advised against styling hair and shaving beards.

The order, distributed on social networks, also contains a request not to play music or hymns on the premises of hairdressing salons, The Frontier Post reported.

Afghan barbers in the area said the prohibition has made it more difficult for them to make a living because citizens are now trying to “blend in” to escape Taliban fighters.

Despite promising otherwise, the Taliban have begun to slowly re-impose repressive laws and retrograde policies. They are imposing laws that defined its 1996-2001 rule when they enforced their version of Islamic Sharia law.

Amid reports of large-scale human rights violations by the Taliban in Afghanistan, the outfit had earlier put on public display the bodies of four people who were killed after they allegedly carried out a kidnapping in the western city of Herat.

It is been over a month since the Taliban captured Kabul after an aggressive and rapid advance against Afghanistan government forces amid the withdrawal of US and NATO troops from the country.

The country plunged into crisis last month after Kabul fell to the Taliban and the democratically elected government of former president Ashraf Ghani collapsed.

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