After shutting down Afghan women’s hair and beauty salons, the Taliban have burnt musical instruments in Afghanistan, claiming music “causes moral corruption”.
According to an official at the Taliban’s Vice and Virtue Ministry, playing music would “cause the youth to go astray”.
From the mid-90s until 2001, all forms of music were banned from social gatherings, TV, and radio while the Taliban were in power in Afghanistan. However, on the Taliban’s return on August 2021, Afghan youths and women have been deprived of music like many other human entitlements.
Ahmad Sarmast, Afghanistan National Institute of Music founder, who is now based in Portugal, spoke of their actions as cultural genocide and musical vandalism.
“The people of Afghanistan have been denied artistic freedom… The burning of musical instruments in Herat is just a small example of the cultural genocide that is taking place in Afghanistan under the leadership of the Taliban,” Dr. Ahmed Sarmast told the BBC.
Some of the instruments destroyed included a guitar, a harmonium, and a tabla – a kind of drum – as well as amplifiers and speakers. Many of the instruments were seized from wedding venues in the city. These instruments cost thousands of dollars but that doesn’t seem an issue to Afghanistan’s extreme ‘moral’ Vice and Virtue Ministry.
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