Afghanistan Times
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KABUL – Taliban’s Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice has vowed to gradually enforce a law banning the media from publishing images of living beings, according to a statement made by a Taliban official on Monday.
The newly announced law is part of a broader effort to formalize the Taliban’s interpretation of Islamic law, which has been imposed since their return to power in 2021. Saiful Islam Khyber, spokesperson for the PVPV, emphasized that the government aims to persuade rather than coerce the public into compliance, stating that images of living creatures are “against Islamic law.”
While some regions, such as Kandahar and Helmand, have started enforcing the ban, the restrictions are yet to be uniformly applied across all provinces. Journalists in various areas, including Ghazni and Maidan Wardak, have been briefed about the new regulations and advised to gradually reduce visual content, particularly images of people.
Despite the Taliban’s official stance, they continue to post images of people on social media, raising questions about the consistency of enforcement.
This move mirrors the Taliban’s previous ban on images during their 1996-2001 regime. Afghanistan’s media landscape has drastically deteriorated since the Taliban takeover, with only 5,100 of the 8,400 media professionals—560 of them women—remaining in the industry. The country has also dropped significantly in global press freedom rankings, according to Reporters Without Borders (RSF), now ranking 178th out of 180 countries.
