Taliban to forbid music in public because it is ‘un-Islamic’
Spokesman says group ‘hoping that we can persuade people not to do such things instead of pressuring them’
By Ben Farmer ISLAMABAD ; Suddaf Chaudry, IN KABUL ; Josie Ensor, US CORRESPONDENT and Campbell MacDiarmid, MIDDLE EAST CORRESPONDENT |Telegraph
The Taliban has announced that it will ban music in public because it is "un-Islamic", as Afghan artists began destroying their works to avoid persecution.
The Taliban's chief spokesman announced the move in an interview in which he tried to give the impression that the group had changed its ways since its first government of the late 1990s.
"Music is forbidden in Islam," Zabiullah Mujahid told the New York Times. "But we're hoping that we can persuade people not to do such things instead of pressuring them."
The Taliban permitted religious singing during their former government but regarded other forms of music as a distraction that could encourage impure thoughts.
Afghan musicians reacted with dismay to the new edict. Shakir Amahung said his career as a singer and musician had seen him perform on television, at functions and for parties held by senior officials and generals.
"I am in disbelief and shock," he told The Telegraph. "That is my life. Not only mine. Anybody working in the entertainment industry, your days are numbered.
"Now my real fear is how will I support my family. I have six children, and I am so scared about their future."
It came as artists began to burn and tear up portraits and sculptures which could be interpreted as secular or supporting Western values.
"My heart shatters to see and talk to Afghan artists who have started destroying their own art out of fear," wrote Omaid H Sharifi, a curator who posted several images of mutilated artworks on Twitter.
Fears are growing that the Taliban may seek to loot and destroy cultural artefacts in Afghanistan's National Museum, considered one of the world's greatest repositories of ancient cultures.
Cultural preservation experts have voiced concern that the militants will target Afghanistan's heritage as they did the last time they controlled the country, when they ransacked the museum and dynamited the famous Buddhas of Bamiyan.
Mohammed Fahim Rahimi, director of the National Museum of Afghanistan, told the Telegraph that he hoped the Taliban would respect its collection.
"The Taliban was criticised for the destruction of the culture and heritage last time, which was a very dark spot regarding the removal of 2,000 year-old Bamiyan statues," he said at the museum in Kabul.
The British Council in Afghanistan has suspended all its heritage projects in the country and its office in the capital has closed.
Before the Taliban was ousted in the 2001 US invasion, fighters destroyed part of the sixth-century Buddhas carved into a cliff in Bamiyan valley, central Afghanistan.
Sharia law forbids the depiction of icons, human bodies and other deities. Under the Taliban, Afghanistan lost an estimated half of its cultural heritage.
The Taliban appeared to have launched its own propaganda campaign, releasing an image imitating the iconic photograph of US Marines raising the American flag on Iwo Jima during the Second World War.
The Taliban's version shows their elite Badri 313 military unit hoisting the group's black-and-white flag atop a mountain in Afghanistan.